The Spanish Language of New Mexico and Southern Colorado

•
The Spanish Language of
New Mexico and Southern Colorado

A Linguistic Atlas

Garland D. Bills
Neddy A. Vigil

University of New Mexico Press | Albuquerque

© 2008 by the University of New Mexico Press
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
13 12 11 10 09 08    1 2 3 4 5 6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bills, Garland D.
  The Spanish language of New Mexico and southern
Colorado : a linguistic atlas / Garland D. Bills, Neddy A. Vigil.
    p. cm.
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 978-0-8263-4549-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Spanish language—Dialects—New Mexico.
2. Spanish language—Dialects—Colorado.
3. Areal linguistics.
I. Vigil, Neddy A. II. Title.
PC4829.N4B55  2008
467'.9789—dc22
2008028713
•

This publication made possible in part

by a grant from Tobias Durán and
the Center for Regional Studies,
University of New Mexico.
Book design and type composition by
Kathleen Sparkes
This book is typeset using
Minion ot pro 10/13; 2 col. 18p9
Display type is Scala Sans ot pro.
This book is dedicated
with love to
Christiane G. Vigil
and to the memory of
Judy C. Haddon Bills

•
 Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments  xiii

Chapter 1. Introduction  1

Part I: The Study of New Mexican Spanish

Chapter 2. New Mexican Spanish: Myths and Realities  11

Chapter 3. The New Mexico–Colorado Spanish Survey  21

Chapter 4. Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico  29

Part II: The Formation of Traditional New Mexican Spanish

Chapter 5. Retentions: The Peninsular Origins of New Mexican Spanish  51

Chapter 6. New Spanish in a New World: Maritime and Caribbean Contributions to

New Mexican Spanish  75

Chapter 7. Nahuatlisms: The Mexican Roots of New Mexican Spanish  93

Part III: The Development of Traditional New Mexican Spanish

Chapter 8. El Nuevo México: Independent Developments  123

Chapter 9. Uneasy Alliances: The Contribution of Local Languages  153

Chapter 10. Anglicisms: The Domineering Force of the Yankee Tide  165

Chapter 11. Mexicanisms: The Erratic Influence of the Homeland  191

Part IV: The Present and Future of New Mexican Spanish

Chapter 12. The Permanent Certainty: Intergenerational Change  215

Chapter 13. The Long Goodbye: The Attrition and Loss of Spanish Skills  241

Chapter 14. Expanding Horizons: The Impact of Standard Spanish  261

Chapter 15. Coming Full Circle: The Impact of Recent Mexican Immigration  283

Chapter 16. Conclusions: The Dialects and Subdialects of New Mexican Spanish  315

Appendix: The NMCOSS Consultants  347

References  357

Index of Spanish Words  367

Index of Variables Cited  375

Subject Index  379

 List of Maps

1-1. Sample Distribution  4 8-3. ‘Porcupine’  129

1-2. Combined ‘Pea,’ ‘Marble,’ and ‘Stamp’  6 8-4. ‘Centipede’  131
2-1. ‘Cabbage’  16 8-5. ‘Nuts’  132
3-1. Geographical sectors and targeted locations  23 8-6. ‘Fish’  134
4-1. ‘Turkey’ – gallina  35 8-7. ‘Throw rug’  136
4-2. ‘Turkey’ – ganso  36 8-8. ‘Safety pin’  138
4-3. ‘Turkey’ – torque  38 8-9. ‘Drive’  139
4-4. ‘Turkey’ – guajolote  41 8-10. ‘Bed’  141
4-5. ‘Turkey’ in Mexico  42 8-11. ‘Bat’  142
4-6. ‘Turkey’ – cócono  44 8-12. ‘Sty’  144
4-7. ‘Turkey’ – güíjolo  45 8-13. ‘I have’  147
5-1. ‘Wake up’  53 8-14. ‘Doctor’  150
5-2. ‘Blouse’  55 9-1. ‘Coffee grounds’  156
5-3. ‘Dress’  57 9-2. ‘Crumbs’  158
5-4. ‘Goose’  60 9-3. ‘Pancakes’  159
5-5. ‘Socks’  61 9-4. ‘Skillet’  161
5-6. ‘Apricot’  63 9-5. ‘Slipper’  163
5-7. ‘Marrow’  65 10-1. ‘Pickup’  169
5-8. ‘I saw’  67 10-2. ‘Sweater’  172
5-9. ‘They brought’  70 10-3. ‘Mop’  174
5-10. ‘Slingshot’  71 10-4. ‘Match’  175
5-11. ‘Smoke’  73 10-5. ‘Quilt’  177
6-1. ‘Tie shoelaces’  77 10-6. ‘Lightbulb’  178
6-2. ‘Somersault’  79 10-7. ‘Quarter’  179
6-3. ‘Riding crop’  81 10-8. ‘Peanut’  181
6-4. ‘Boat’  83 10-9. ‘Cracker’  182
6-5. ‘Rain gutter’  85 10-10. ‘Cookie’  184
6-6. ‘Mosquito’  87 10-11. ‘Biscuit’  185
6-7. ‘Mosquito’ in Mexico  88 10-12. ‘Cake’  187
6-8. ‘Slip’  90 10-13. ‘Penny’  188
6-9. ‘Skirt’  91 10-14. ‘Suit’  189
7-1. ‘Grasshopper’  98 11-1. ‘Ewe’  193
7-2. ‘Twins’  100 11-2. ‘Hummingbird’  195
7-3. ‘Owl’  101 11-3. ‘I cook’  196
7-4. ‘Hut, shack’  103 11-4. ‘Part’  198
7-5. ‘Tub’  106 11-5. ‘Cup’  199
7-6. ‘Dipper’  107 11-6. ‘Shear’  200
7-7. ‘Kite’  109 11-7. ‘Honeybee’  202
7-8. ‘Windmill’  110 11-8. ‘Wasp’  203
7-9. ‘Buzzard’  111 11-9. ‘Honeybee,’ ‘Wasp’  205
7-10. ‘Pickaxe’  114 11-10. ‘Ankle’ in Mexico  206
7-11. ‘Trunk’  115 11-11. ‘Ankle’  208
7-12. ‘String’  117 11-12. ‘Temple’  209
7-13. ‘Shoelace’  119 11-13. ‘Temple’ in Mexico  210
8-1. ‘Bear’  125 11-14. ‘Cornsilk’  211
8-2. ‘Children’  126 11-15. ‘Cornsilk’ in Mexico  212

viii
 12-1. ‘Dime’  220
12-2. ‘Shorts’  222
12-3. ‘Panties’  225
12-4. ‘Airplane’  229
12-5. ‘Student’  230
12-6. ‘Popcorn’  233
12-7. ‘Ice cream’  236
12-8. ‘Harmonica’  238
13-1. ‘Mane’  252
13-2. ‘Back of knee’  255
13-3. ‘Earrings’  256
13-4. ‘Red’  259
14-1. ‘Teacher’  265
14-2. ‘Christmas’  266
14-3. ‘Ruler’  268
14-4. ‘Telephone’  274
14-5. ‘Gray’  276
14-6. ‘Gender of idioma’  280
14-7. ‘Form of idioma’  281
15-1. ‘Dollar’  286
15-2. ‘Nurse’  287
15-3. ‘Balloon’  289
15-4. ‘Brakes’  290
15-5. ‘Naked’  292
15-6. ‘Bucket’  294
15-7. ‘Water hose’  296
15-8. ‘Kitchen chair’  297
15-9. ‘Marble’  298
15-10. ‘Well’  300
15-11. ‘Pea’  302
15-12. ‘Belt’  303
15-13. ‘Hoe’  304
15-14. ‘Tin can’  306
15-15. ‘Avocado’  307
15-16. ‘Spoiled’  308
15-17. ‘Green bean’  310
15-18. ‘Chin’  311
15-19. ‘Crow’  312
16-1. ‘Stamps’  317
16-2. ‘Baking soda’  319
16-3. Traditional-Border Bundle  320
16-4. ‘Belch’  322
16-5. ‘Wallet’  324
16-6. Río Arriba Bundle  325
16-7. ‘Attic’  326
16-8. ‘Winter cap’  328
16-9. North Central Bundle  329
16-10. ‘Clothesline’  331
16-11. ‘Syrup’  332
16-12. Northeast Bundle  334
16-13. ‘Earthworm’  335
16-14. West Central Bundle  336
16-15. ‘Purse’  338
16-16. Southwest Bundle  339
16-17. ‘Moth’  341
16-18. ‘Strawberry’  342
16-19. ‘Pacifier’  344
ix
List of Tables

4-1. Responses for ‘Turkey’ in Kiddle and NMCOSS  33

4-2. Responses for ‘Turkey’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  46
4-3. Responses for ‘Turkey’ by Years of education (percentages)  47
5-1. Archaic pronunciation responses for four h-initial variables (percentages)  72
8-1. Use of first person ha by age and Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  148
8-2. Use of first person ha by age and Years of education (percentages)  148
12-1. Responses for ‘Turkey’ by four Generations (percentages)  216
12-2. Decline of Traditional Spanish forms across Generations (percentages)  218
12-3. Responses for ‘Dime’ by Generation (percentages)  219
12-4. Responses for ‘Bat’ by Generation (percentages)  219
12-5. Responses for ‘Shorts’ by Generation (percentages)  223
12-6. Responses for ‘Panties’ by Generation (percentages)  223
12-7. Responses for ‘Temple’ by Generation (percentages)  226
12-8. Responses for ‘Kite’ by Generation (percentages)  226
12-9. Responses for ‘I saw’ by Generation (percentages)  227
12-10. Responses for ‘Skirt’ by Generation (percentages)  227
12-11. Responses for ‘Airplane’ by Generation (percentages)  228
12-12. Responses for ‘Student’ by Generation (percentages)  231
12-13. Responses for ‘Suit’ by Generation (percentages)  231
12-14. Responses for ‘Quarter’ by Generation (percentages)  232
12-15. Responses for ‘Popcorn’ by Generation (percentages)  234
12-16. Responses for ‘Ice cream’ by Generation (percentages)  235
12-17. Responses for ‘Cookie’ by Generation (percentages)  237
12-18. Responses for ‘Harmonica’ by Generation (percentages)  239
13-1. Generation by Age acquired English (percentages)  243
13-2. Generation by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  244
13-3. Age acquired English by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  244
13-4. No response for selected variables by Generation (percentages)  245
13-5. Responses for ‘Bat’ by Age acquired English (percentages)  246
13-6. No response for selected variables by Age acquired English (percentages)  246
13-7. Responses for ‘Bat’ by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  247
13-8. No response for selected variables by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  247
13-9. Lexical gap English response for selected variables by Generation (percentages)  249
13-10. Lexical gap English response for selected variables by Age acquired English (percentages)  249
13-11. Lexical gap English response for selected variables by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  249
13-12. Responses for ‘Thread (a needle)’ by Generation (percentages)  250
13-13. Responses for ‘Temple’ by Age acquired English (percentages)  250
13-14. Prompt required for selected variables by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  251
13-15. Responses for ‘Mane’ by Generation (percentages)  253
13-16. Responses for ‘Earthworm’ by Age acquired English (percentages)  253
13-17. Responses for ‘Back of knee’ by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  254
13-18. Responses for ‘Earrings’ by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  257
13-19. Responses for ‘Quiero que’ completion by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  257
13-20. Responses for ‘Quarter’ by Spanish proficiency (percentages)  258
13-21. Responses for ‘Red’ by Age acquired English (percentages)  260
13-22. Responses for ‘I saw’ by Age acquired English (percentages)  260

x
 14-1. Responses for ‘Red’ by Years of education (percentages)  263
14-2. Responses for ‘Red’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  263
14-3. Responses for ‘Teacher’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  264
14-4. Responses for ‘Christmas’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  267
14-5. Responses for ‘Balloon’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  267
14-6. Responses for ‘Ruler’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  269
14-7. Responses for ‘Sweater’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  269
14-8. Responses for ‘Ice cream’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  270
14-9. Responses for ‘Dress’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  270
14-10. Selected standard lexical responses by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  271
14-11. Selected standard grammatical responses by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  272
14-12. Responses for ‘Bicycle’ by Years of education (percentages)  273
14-13. Responses for ‘Telephone’ by Years of education (percentages)  275
14-14. Responses for ‘Ice cream’ by Years of education (percentages)  275
14-15. Responses for ‘Gray’ by Years of education (percentages)  277
14-16. Responses for ‘Ankle’ by Years of education (percentages)  277
14-17. Selected standard lexical forms by Years of education (percentages)  278
14-18. Responses for ‘Form of idioma’ by Years of education (percentages)  279
14-19. Responses for ‘Gender of idioma’ by Years of education (percentages)  279
14-20. Selected standard grammatical forms by Years of education (percentages)  282
15-1. Responses for ‘Dollar’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  285
15-2. Responses for ‘Cabbage’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  291
15-3. Responses for ‘Naked’ by Years of education (percentages)  293
15-4. Responses for ‘Bucket’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)  293

xi
Preface and Acknowledgments
• The Spanish Language of New Mexico and Southern
Colorado: A Linguistic Atlas reports on the first
large-scale systematic survey of a unique Spanish generally
referred to as New Mexican Spanish. This book explores
the evolution of this variety of Spanish from its origins in
Spain to the present. Its development from its origin in
Spain begins in the contact with Native Americans, first
in the Caribbean and then in the highlands of Mexico,
and in the intermingling of speakers from varied parts
of Spain. This early New World Spanish became the first
European language spoken by a community on soil that
is now within the United States. It was introduced into
New Mexico by colonists under the command of Juan de
Oñate in 1598, and reinforced by later colonists who accom-
panied Diego de Vargas in the reconquest of New Mexico
in 1693. Isolation from mainstream Spanish in this remote
colony facilitated the development of special character-
istics in the local language. Subsequently, that language
evolved to a greater degree as it came into contact with
English and suffered further isolation from the Spanish-
speaking world as a result of political incorporation of
the region into the United States. Finally, contact with
modern Mexican Spanish through ever-increasing
immigration in the twentieth century has been a contribu-
tor to the distinctive character and geographical variability
of New Mexican Spanish.
This study is based on data from the New Mexico–
Colorado Spanish Survey (NMCOSS), a project that
involved interviews of 357 native-born Spanish speak-
ers representing communities across New Mexico and
sixteen counties of southern Colorado. The atlas analyzes
these data and provides maps that comprehensively
describe the present linguistic and sociolinguistic situa-
tion of New Mexican Spanish. Further, in elucidating the
factors that have contributed to the historical develop-
ment of the language, the analysis provides a foundation
for predicting its future.
The content for a good portion of this book has
grown out of a series of professional presentations and
published articles. Most of the publications are referenced
in the body of this work; in the interest of full disclosure,
we must mention several other works: Bills (1996, 1997)
and Vigil and Bills (1997, 2001, 2002). Our analyses and
interpretations have been enriched by feedback from
numerous colleagues and friends who heard or read these
earlier efforts. Our editor at the University of New Mexico
xiii
Press, Lisa Pacheco, has provided invaluable assistance
in substantive as well as stylistic matters. Getting this
book in published form was made possible by a number
of other members of the team at UNM Press as well as
Susan Silver, our copy editor, and Richard Comfort, who
carried out most of our indexing.
Our research owes a tremendous debt to the many
other persons and institutions that have provided support
and encouragement for our efforts. It is not possible to
individually acknowledge all those supporters, but a few
specific cases require mention.
The National Endowment for the Humanities, an
in­dependent federal agency in the United States, sup-
ported this project for three and a half years, 1991–95, as
grants RT-21263-91 and RT-21502-9 entitled “Linguistic
Atlas and Archive of the Spanish of New Mexico and
Southern Colorado.” We gratefully acknowledge this
generous support.
We wish to express our deepest gratitude to nine
research assistants who carried out virtually all of the
interviews and contributed importantly to entering data
into our computerized database: Ysaura Bernal-Enríquez,
María Dolores Gonzales Velásquez, María Cristina
López, Javier Ochoa, Gilberto Pérez, Franklin Romero,
Primo Torres, Rodney Ulibarrí, and Lucy C. Vigil. At
the time of their participation, Gonzales and Vigil were
xiv
PhD graduates of the University of New Mexico, Ochoa
and Torres were graduate students at New Mexico State
University, and the remainder were graduate students at
the University of New Mexico.
We also thank the following persons for direct
contributions to the project: Walter Archuleta, then
a graduate student at the University of New Mexico;
Patricia Armendáriz, adjunct professor of Spanish at
Coastline Community College and Santa Ana College
in California; June A. Jaramillo, then a teacher in the
Albuquerque Public Schools; Enrique Lamadrid, profes-
sor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New
Mexico; and Daniel Villa, professor of languages and
linguistics at New Mexico State University.
We also wish to acknowledge with thanks the contri-
butions in data entry that Julie Chalk, Renee Harton, and
Verónica Vargas performed while they were students at
the University of New Mexico.
Finally, a very special expression of our gratitude
goes out to the 357 Coloradans and New Mexicans who
served as consultants for this project. They selflessly gave
their time and expertise in subjecting themselves to inter-
views, a couple of which lasted up to eight hours. They
made this study possible. Les agradecemos con todo cora-
zón y con mucho respeto.
preface and acknowledgments
 Chap ter 1
Introduction
• ¡El español de Nuevo México! New Mexican
Spanish! For lovers of language, lovers of the Span­
ish language in particular, the name evokes emotions of
intrigue, mystery, and romance. Made widely known
from the beginning of the twentieth century by the
linguistic and folklore studies of native son Aurelio
Macedonio Espinosa, this variety of Spanish has become
famous for its distinctiveness, for having survived so well
on a remote fringe of the Spanish-speaking world.
This book is designed for lovers of language, for
lovers of language contact and language change, for lovers
of the Spanish language in particular, and most espe-
cially for lovers of New Mexican Spanish. It is a linguistic
exploration, delving broadly and deeply into the Spanish
language as spoken today by the Hispanic population of
New Mexico and southern Colorado. For the authors, it
is a linguistic love affair.
This book is a study of variation in language. Spanish
is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
And partially as a consequence of that distribution, it
varies considerably from place to place. Beans are called
frijoles in Mexico but judías in Spain and porotos in
Peru. A strawberry is called fresa in Spain but frutilla in
Ecuador. An avocado is called aguacate in Guatemala but
palta in Peru. A pumpkin is called auyama in Colombia
but calabaza in New Mexico.
This book is a linguistic atlas. It explores the geogra-
phy of linguistic variation. It presents language facts on
maps. But it is not the typical traditional linguistic atlas
that presents material accessible only to the specialist. We
provide a lot of technical information, but our overriding
intent has been to make this information available to any
interested person. Our desire has been to share with all
kinds of readers a multitude of facts about New Mexican
Spanish: its beauty, its diversity, its history, its present
state, its societal conflicts, its prospects for the future.
Historical Note
The Spanish language and Hispanic culture have left
indelible impressions on the landscape of the southwest-
ern United States. These imprints date back to the earli-
est European explorations of the region in the sixteenth
century. Just fifteen years after Hernán Cortés’s conquest
of Mexico in 1521, Cabeza de Vaca made his well-known
trek through part of the region. A little later, in 1540,
Francisco de Coronado led a discovery expedition into
the region, and in the following decades there were other
organized incursions, all of which had a disruptive but
momentary impact on the native populations.
Then, toward the end of that century, in 1598, a small
group of settlers, soldiers, and priests under the leadership
of Juan de Oñate established the first permanent Spanish
colony near the Tewa-speaking Native American village
that they named San Juan, at the confluence of the Río
Grande and the Chama River, some thirty miles north of
1
the present city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the next
eighty years, Hispanic colonists dispersed along the upper
Río Grande and founded a number of tiny settlements and
missions, including Santa Fe itself, which was founded in
1608 and elevated to capitol of the province in 1610.
Since that original 1598 settlement of some five
hundred persons, the Hispanic presence in el Nuevo
México has been continuous except for a brief twelve-year
interlude. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680, a general uprising
of the local Native American Pueblos, sent the Spanish
scurrying three hundred miles to the south, to El Paso del
Norte, the settlement in the El Paso–Juárez area that had
itself been established only in 1659. However, by the end
of the seventeenth century the colony was permanently
reestablished with a substantial Spanish-speaking popu-
lation composed of prior colonists and new immigrants,
totaling more than a thousand individuals.
During the eighteenth century, the Hispanic popu-
lation gradually increased and spread out along the
waterways in what is now New Mexico. Albuquerque,
for example, was founded in 1706. At the same time, the
Spanish presence was becoming prominent throughout
the Southwest. In Arizona, the San Xavier del Bac mission
was established in 1699 and the nearby Presidio of Tucson
in 1775. In Texas, the mission that would become the
Alamo and the town of San Antonio came into being in
1718. And in California, the San Diego mission (San Diego
de Alcalá) was founded in 1769. In Colorado, however, no
Spanish settlement occurred until 1851, when settlers from
northern New Mexico followed the Río Grande up into
the San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado to establish
the town of San Luis.
During this early colonization period, growth of the
Hispanic populace was slow. By the end of the eighteenth
century—two hundred years after Oñate’s first settle-
ment—the European (that is, Spanish-heritage) popula-
tion was estimated at only twenty-five thousand in the
region that now comprises the four border states of the
United States. Most of these people were in Texas and
New Mexico, with well over half of the total living in the
latter area.
By the early decades of the nineteenth century,
as Mexico was adjusting to independence from Spain
gained in 1821, the economic monopoly that Chihuahua,
a regional capital of northern Mexico, held over New
Mexico was relaxed and trade routes were established with
the United States. At the same time, the westward U.S.
expansion was bringing Anglo interlopers into increas-
ingly intimate contact with the Hispanic population. For
example, the same year that Mexico became independent,
2 chapter one
Stephen F. Austin led a group of settlers into Texas to
establish residence. The ultimate result of the alien incur-
sions into this remote and poorly protected remnant of
the Spanish empire was the transfer of these lands to the
United States. Texas declared its independence in 1836
and was welcomed into the United States in 1845. Most
of the Mexican territory west of Texas was gained by the
United States in 1848 as a result of the Mexican-American
War. At this juncture, Anglo-Americans poured into the
region, rapidly overwhelming the Hispanics and Native
Americans in numbers, except in New Mexico where the
invasion was much slower. In 1880, Anglos still were less
than 10% of New Mexico’s population (Williams 1986,
126), and they remained a minority until the middle of
the twentieth century. By the 1940s only half of the state’s
population was Hispanic (Simmons 1977, 163).
For three hundred years, the Spanish speakers of
the Southwest endured in isolation on the northern
fringes of the Spanish-speaking Western Hemisphere,
and the routine immigrants were absorbed, cultur-
ally and linguistically, into the existing communities. A
quite different group of Hispanics arrived in the twenti-
eth century via massive immigration from Mexico. This
immigration may be divided into two major components.
The first big wave was economic and political in nature,
persons escaping the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution
that began in 1910. A subsequent wave of immigration
followed World War II and continues to the present. This
second wave is entirely economic in nature—immigrants
seeking employment on the farms and in the cities of the
burgeoning neighbor to the north.
This quick overview of the historical situation
permits us to draw a basic distinction among the Spanish
speakers of the Southwest. The overwhelming major-
ity are the result of recent immigration during the last
hundred years or so. They speak a variety of Spanish
much like that of their Mexican neighbors across the
border. A tiny minority, descendants of pre-twentieth-
century settlers, speaks a quite different variety, which
Juan M. Lope Blanch, the dean of Mexican linguistic
scholarship, has called “Traditional Southwest Spanish.”
This other variety has all but disappeared everywhere
except in New Mexico and southern Colorado. Moreno
de Alba and Perissinotto (1988, 177) explain the situation
in California:
(1-1) Es muy probable que hacia 1840 sí hubiera
muchas afinidades entre estos dos dialectos [de
California y de Nuevo México], pero el californio
. . . prácticamente desapareció a finales del siglo
 XIX y el que hoy se habla tiene como base el de
los mexicanos que comenzaron a llegar durante
las primeras décadas del siglo XX y las siguientes
inmigraciones. ‘It is very likely that around 1840
there was considerable affinity between those
two dialects [of California and New Mexico],
but the California dialect . . . practically disap-
peared toward the end of the nineteenth century
and that which is spoken today has as its base
the dialect of the Mexicans who began to arrive
during the first decades of the twentieth century
and the subsequent immigrations.’
Data and Maps
This book is an exploration of the Spanish language as it
is spoken across New Mexico and the southern third of
Colorado. The data reported herein come from the New
Mexico–Colorado Spanish Survey (NMCOSS), which is
described in detail in chapter 3. Briefly, the objective of
the survey was to document as comprehensively as possi-
ble the range of Spanish spoken by natives of this region
at the end of the twentieth century. The project involved
carrying out tape-recorded interviews in the 1990s with a
large number of native speakers of Spanish. Several crite-
ria went in to the selection of these consultants. First, they
had to have been born and raised in the survey region.
Second, they had to have been exposed to Spanish as chil-
dren and to have developed sufficient skill in the language
(even if largely receptive) to participate in a lengthy inter-
view that usually lasted two to three hours. Third, they
were selected to provide broad geographical distribution,
both sexes, and varied ages.
Our exploration is based on the speech of 357 Spanish
speakers scattered across the region as illustrated in map
1-1, Sample Distribution. Each black dot on this map
indicates the approximate geographical location of 1
consultant. That location represents the speaker’s life-
long residence or at least residence during the speaker’s
formative years. The appendix provides a complete list of
these consultants, ordered by interview number with age,
gender, and location represented; this list also includes
the person’s name when permission to do so was granted.
We provide the interview number whenever we cite a
comment made by a consultant, so if additional basic
information about the speaker is desired, it can be found
in the appendix.
All of the linguistic maps presented in this book
display speaker locations in the same way. The data
Introduction
for the maps are extracted from a major component of
the interview in which the consultants provided verbal
responses to specific stimuli, usually a picture illustrat-
ing a concrete object. For some stimuli real objects were
used and in other cases the stimulus was verbal. In each
of the following maps, each different response to the same
stimulus is represented with a distinct symbol and the
responses are plotted on the map at the speaker’s loca-
tion, as in map 1-1.
Of course, people often gave two or more responses
for a particular case. However, unless otherwise explained,
only the consultant’s preferred or first response is plotted
on a map or included in our analyses.
Terminology
A principal characteristic of human language is label-
ing. We determine that a collection of things in the real
world (or in our imaginations) seems to form a class, and
we impose on that class a convenient label. Although our
labels, our words, snugly cover much that is out there,
other things are elusive. Our labels tend to be pretty fuzzy
around the edges. Our word bird works well for, say, a
robin. If a large group of American English speakers were
asked to make a list of birds, “robin” is likely to show up
on many lists. But “ostrich” would doubtless be quite rare
at best on those lists. The ostrich doesn’t match easily
with whatever we have in mind for the term bird. On the
other hand, those not too hung up on zoological preci-
sion, might well put “bat” on the list of birds. Similarly, a
label like bug may not serve well in scientific realms, but
it functions quite well as a category for everyday conver-
sation. Our linguistic labels always seem to leak a bit, but
they are nonetheless very useful. Indeed, they are essen-
tial devices for communication.
This book is about language and people. Both occur
in the real world as isolated individual things that need
to be grouped into categories so that we can talk about
them efficiently. People is a useful label, a class of things
distinct from bugs or horses or snakes. The label people
is a cover term for a group of isolated individual things
each of which is unique. At the other extreme, we can use
a label for each individual member of that group, Garland
Bills, say, or Neddy Vigil.
We also find it necessary to have labels for groups of
individuals that are still smaller than people. Those inter-
mediate labels may be based on varied criteria: nation-
ality (Italian versus German), hair color (blondes versus
brunettes), sex (men versus women), age (adult versus
child), and so on. One thing we notice immediately in
3
1-1. Sample Distribution

4 chapter one
using those labels is that unclear cases invariably crop
up. What about those northern Italians who don’t speak
Italian but rather a variety of German? Is she a real
blonde? Boys will be boys, but so will men. There are
always fuzzy cases that are not so easy to decide. But the
labels are essential for our purposes.
The same problem surfaces in talking about language.
Language is the ability to produce and understand an
essentially infinite number of sentences, and that ability
exists as an isolated individual thing that can be objec-
tively located only in the mind of an individual. Language
scientists (linguists) know that each person’s language is
distinct from that of any other person. No two people,
for example, have the same command of exactly the same
vocabulary. Idiolect (think idiosyncrasy) is the label that
linguists use to refer to that individual phenomenon.
Thus, we might have occasion to talk about Garland Bills’s
idiolect versus Neddy Vigil’s idiolect. Well, maybe not in
ordinary conversation! Few may feel the need for the term
idiolect, but we all need intermediate labels to contrast
groups of linguistic things that fall in between language
and X’s idiolect. For example, the labels English and
Spanish work fine for most purposes. You may have seri-
ous problems understanding a conversation between two
speakers of some varieties of “English.” Objectively, some
“Spanish” is closer in linguistic features to the Portuguese
class. And let us not get into the terminological squabble
of referring to several clearly distinct languages with the
single label Chinese, or of giving distinct labels for Hindi
and Urdu (or for Serbian and Croatian) as if they were
distinct languages.
The challenge in this book is to establish labels for
the varieties of “Spanish” that are prominent in the New
Mexico and southern Colorado region. In the first place,
it would be useful to have a label shorter than the Spanish
of New Mexico and southern Colorado! With no disre-
spect at all intended for the Spanish speakers of south-
ern Colorado, we are going to label this over-arching
package New Mexican Spanish, as we did at the begin-
ning of this chapter. It’s a convenient label for which a
bit of historical support can be adduced. Colorado was
part of the New Mexico territory until it became a state
in 1876; Spanish speakers from New Mexico were the first
settlers in southern Colorado; and probably a majority of
Spanish-speaking southern Coloradans today can trace
their ancestry to New Mexico.
More crucially, we need to distinguish two principal
varieties of this New Mexican Spanish. Consider map 1-2.
People in the survey region employ two different sets of
words for the three lexical variables: ‘Pea,’ ‘Marble,’ and
Introduction
‘Stamp.’ The NMCOSS consultants who labeled these
items with the variants chícharo, canica, and estam-
pilla, respectively, are marked with red squares on the
map. Let us for the moment call these persons speak-
ers of Y-Spanish. The map shows that they are generally
arrayed across the southern part of New Mexico near
the Mexican border, as well as in a few other areas that
represent substantial immigration from Mexico during
the past hundred years or so. In contrast, those who
preferred the variants alverjón, bolita, and estampa are
marked with green circles on the map. Let’s call them
speakers of Z-Spanish. These persons dominate in the
remainder of the region, the traditional heartland of the
Spanish-speaking population that traces its presence in
New Mexico to the arrival of Oñate’s colonists in 1598
or de Vargas’s recolonizers at the end of the seventeenth
century. (About two-thirds of those who responded for
all three variables were consistent in selecting all three
variants from one set. Another third provided mixed
responses, one or two from set Y and one or two from set
Z, and are not included on the map; they tend to represent
areas of contact between Y-Spanish and Z-Spanish.)
In the preceding paragraph we have introduced two
more terms that we will use with frequency in this book.
The linguistic feature that varies is called a variable. We
will usually employ the English translation as the name
of a variable and consistently introduce each variable in
single quotes with an initial capital. Thus, ‘Pea’ is a vari-
able of interest. The distinct realizations of a variable are
called variants and will always be presented in italics. So,
chícharo and alverjón are the two major variants of the
variable ‘Pea’ in New Mexican Spanish.
Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa, the distinguished
New Mexico linguist of the early twentieth century,
makes clear in his commentary and map that the “New
Mexican Spanish” he studied specifically excludes the
Spanish of the lower third of New Mexico (1909, 47,
52–53). Ornstein (1951) provides a broad range of exam-
ples to make explicit how the two kinds of Spanish differ.
The distinction between these two varieties is one of the
strongest linguistic demarcations we’ll see in this book.
We need convenient labels to refer to these two linguis-
tic objects, something more memorable than Y-Spanish
versus Z-Spanish. For the Z-Spanish, Lope Blanch (1987)
uses the term “Traditional Southwest Spanish,” whose
speakers represent early settlement prior to the twenti-
eth century and who today reside primarily in the upper
Río Grande drainage area of central and northern New
Mexico and south-central Colorado. This label is useful
even though it is true, of course, that all manifestations
5
1-2. Combined ‘Pea,’ ‘Marble,’ and ‘Stamp’

6 chapter one
of Spanish are “traditional.” In past publications, we
adopted the Traditional Spanish label, and we referred
to Y-Spanish as “Mexican Spanish” because this variety
owes its presence primarily to immigration from Mexico
during the twentieth century, and its speakers tend to have
closer contact with the Spanish spoken on the other side of
the international border. However, this latter label doesn’t
serve us well, in part because all of New Mexican Spanish
is “Mexican” (an assertion that we will back up with facts
throughout this book). More important, in the present
more comprehensive study we need to reserve the term
Mexican Spanish specifically for reference to the Spanish
spoken in Mexico.
In this book, for reference to the two major categories
of New Mexican Spanish, we have somewhat reluctantly
settled on the special terms Traditional Spanish and
Border Spanish. Naturally, the terms may present some
cognitive discord for some readers, but we will use them
consistently. The reader should have no problem under-
standing the general point being made in every case.
In the preceding discussion we have consistently
selected a neutral term in referring to varieties of a
language. Throughout this book, however, we will often
be using the linguist’s technical term, dialect, to mean
just that, a variety of a language. Again, no disparagement
is intended. Everybody speaks a dialect of English, for
example, whether it’s the Cajun dialect of Louisiana, the
southern dialect of rural Alabama, the Chicano dialect
of East Los Angeles, the Yankee dialect of New England,
or the standard dialect of American English that many
educated people aim for. And dialect differences there
are! There are great dialect differences among speakers
of English and great dialect differences among speakers
of Spanish, as one would expect of two of the most widely
spoken languages in the world. As with all things in life,
beauty rests in diversity. Dialects that may be jarring,
difficult to understand, or even ugly to some people will
be languid, logical, and lovely to others. Most people find
a nurturing comfort in the sounds of the dialect they were
exposed to as a child. Every variety of English or Spanish,
every dialect of any language, is valid and lovely, at least
to its users and to linguists. Here we will celebrate the
dialects of New Mexican Spanish as we celebrate diver-
sity in all things.
We also require labels for the groups of people that
we discuss in this book. These groups are socially defined,
and any term we use is likely to be found objectionable
by someone. The 357 people who provide the data for this
language exploration may be reasonably lumped into one
big group based on ancestral ties to the Spanish language.
Introduction
Because all of these individuals also have ancestral ties
with Mexico, and indeed all tend to refer to themselves as
mexicano when speaking Spanish, the label “Mexican” or
“Mexicano” might be most appropriate. However, we will
be reserving Mexican as a nationality label to refer to citi-
zens of Mexico. Our group of U.S. citizens has been vari-
ously labeled “Hispanic,” “Mexican American” (with or
without a hyphen), “Chicano,” and “Latino.” Some influ-
ential persons, including prominent New Mexican schol-
ars such as Estevan Arellano (e.g., 2006) and Enrique
Lamadrid and Miguel Gandert (e.g., 2003), prefer the
term “Indo-Hispano” (sometimes “Indo-Hispanic”)
to emphasize the mestizo nature of this population.
Anybody familiar with the local situation knows there is
no safe way out here! (For the results of a couple of perti-
nent surveys about local ethnic labels, see Metzger 1974
for Albuquerque; Villa and Villa 1998 for New Mexico
State University students in Las Cruces; and especially
Gonzales 2005, who examines the self-identity labels
preferred by 85 of the NMCOSS consultants.) We will
henceforth use what we perceive to be the most neutral
(though still quite controversial) term, Hispanic.
We will also have occasion to refer to non-Hispanic
groups in the region. Here we will follow local standards.
For reference to the descendants of the original human
inhabitants of the region, we will usually employ the label
Native American, though Indian will also suffice. For
purposes necessary in this exploration, but also conform-
ing substantially to local custom, we will cram all other
individuals, however much they might protest, under a
single label tagged as Anglo. In doing so, no disrespect
is intended toward those who would insist with appro-
priate pride that they really should be labeled “African
American,” “Greek,” “white,” and so on.
Finally, we find it necessary to identify and label
subgroups within the Hispanic ethnicity. For our purposes,
only two categories need to be distinguished: those who
tend to speak Traditional Spanish and those who tend to
speak Border Spanish. These groups are not just linguis-
tically different, however. Although both groups usually
label themselves mexicanos when speaking Spanish, the
ethnic difference shows up in their self-identifications
in English. Those in the south typically call themselves
“Mexican” or “Mexican American” while those in the
north tend to prefer “Hispanic,” “Spanish American,” or
“Spanish” (for a discussion of the sociopolitical underpin-
nings of this use, see Gonzales-Berry and Maciel 2000, 5–6
and especially Nieto-Phillips 2000, 116–34; 2004).
This difference in self identification shows up clearly
in the findings of the U.S. Census. In the 2000 Census
7
(and similarly in the 1980 and 1990 censuses), Hispanics
were asked to further identify themselves in one of four
categories: (1) Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano; (2)
Puerto Rican; (3) Cuban; or (4) Other Spanish/Hispanic/
Latino. In the southern county of Doña Ana, 71% of
Hispanics placed themselves in the first category and only
28% chose the “Other” option. In contrast, in the north-
ern New Mexico county of Río Arriba, 87% of Hispanics
chose the “Other” category and just 13% identified them-
selves in the “Mexican” category. In New Mexico’s larg-
est city, Albuquerque, which is in the northern half of the
state but which draws immigrants from northern towns
as well as from Mexico and border areas of the United
States, the identity selections are more leveled: 38% prefer
the “Mexican” category and 59% the “Other” category
(U.S. Bureau of the Census 2000).
8 chapter one
Clearly, any labels we try to put on ethnic groups are
also going to show leakage. Rather than rely on any of
the existing emotionally loaded terms, we have decided
to adopt neutral labels associated loosely with geography.
We will use as the two ethnicity labels: (1) Northerners,
for those associated with the Traditional Spanish heart-
land of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado,
and (2) Southerners, for those associated with the Border
Spanish of southern New Mexico, even though this ethnic
group too is found across the northern areas. No doubt
our attempted easy way out accords with the Spanish
saying, Salimos de Guatemala y caímos en Guatepeor (for
which we offer a literal translation that loses much: ‘We
left Guatebad and fell into Guateworse’, or sort of ‘Out of
the frying pan and into the fire’).
Part I

The Study of
New Mexican Spanish
 Chap ter t wo
New Mexican Spanish
Myths and Realities
• Few people have a sophisticated understanding of
the nature of human language. Most people are
quite unaware of how their own language works. As in
other areas where the systematicity lies beyond the limits
of our understanding, myths and legends come to the
rescue. They make the unknown less ominous. Myths
are valuable cultural resources because above all else
their purpose is to provide reassurance to the commu-
nity. Consequently, every culture seems to hold dearly to
beliefs that have little basis in reality. And on the basis
of those beliefs, communities make judgments about
the quality of all sorts of behaviors, including language
behavior. Societies can be quite cruel, rigidly imposing
their norms of acceptable behavior. But paradoxically,
having that guide to behavior, however devoid of a basis
in reality, can be comforting. Myths about language are
the police that try to keep the citizenry adhering to the
accepted norms of linguistic behavior.
However much solace they may provide, language
myths also have a dangerous side. The normative control
tends to be applied not just to the language manifested but
also to the people who speak that kind of language. Thus,
speakers of a “good” variety tend to be considered “good”
people, and speakers of “bad” varieties are often seen as
“bad” people. The historical origin of these judgments,
however, is usually just the reverse: the class of people
who are most admired come to be regarded as those who
use the best language, and the most socially disadvan-
taged come to have their way of speaking devalued.
In short, beliefs about language reflect the usual
societal inequalities, inequalities captured in seemingly
universal fashion in the observation of a well-experienced
ninety-six-year-old woman from northern New Mexico
(interview 219):
(2-1) El hombre rico siempre quiere tener en un puño
al pobre. ‘The rich man always wants to hold
the poor fellow in his fist.’
Or to quote the earthier chicken coop analogy offered
by a younger eighty-six-year-old woman from Trinidad,
Colorado (interview 60):
(2-2) Bien dicen que la gallina de arriba caga
a la de abajo. ‘For good reason they say that
the chicken on the upper perch shits on the
one below.’
The Hispanics of New Mexico and southern Colorado
are well aware of both social differences and language
11
differences. And like all languages, New Mexican Spanish
is burdened with its share of linguistic myths. We will
touch on just five of those myths here. Our intent is not
so much to wipe out those myths (not a bad objective, but
myths are not easily smote) as to reveal how those myths
help us understand the complex interactions of language,
society, and culture in this setting.
Myth 1: “Standard Spanish is good; nonstandard
Spanish is bad.” Speakers of New Mexican Spanish are
often told that their Spanish is deficient. Thus, for exam-
ple, an eighty-one-year-old woman (interview 320) from
Hobbs, New Mexico, reports on the effect of the attitudes
of her Mexico-born husband:
(2-3) Hasta me da a mí pena hablar mi español que
hablo, porque sometimes él me dice que si hablo
chino o japonés. ‘It even makes me sad to speak
the Spanish I speak, because sometimes he asks
me if I’m speaking Chinese or Japanese.’
(In citing conversational examples from the tapes, we strive
to represent this spontaneous speech exactly as spoken,
leaving out only occasional stutters and hesitations.)
Of all our 357 consultants, the woman who uttered
example 2-3 is 1 of only 11 who have a spouse born in
Mexico. This in spite of the fact that 55 consultants have
at least 1 parent born in Mexico. We can only wonder if
language differences might play a role in this apparently low
rate of marriage between two Spanish-speaking groups.
The major nurturers of the myth that New Mexican
Spanish is “bad” are people from Mexico or other Spanish-
speaking countries who have been educated in Spanish and
imbued with the strong prescriptivist tradition of the Real
Academia Española (Royal Academy of Spanish). They
tend to have strong feelings about what is proper Spanish
and find the local Spanish to be lacking, even to the point of
being a corrupt and degenerate means of communication.
Anglos who have acquired a good command of standard
Spanish may share those attitudes for the same reasons.
But you can’t just blame the Academy for these senti-
ments. One of the most universal language myths is that
there exist in absolute terms good ways of speaking and
bad ways of speaking. But honestly, there are no angels
and no devils in human language. In its linguistic struc-
ture, one language variety is no more angelic or demonic
than any other. Presidents can use language as vile and
devious as that used by convicts. On the other hand, the
colloquial language of the home can inspire as easily as
the cultivated language of Gabriel García Márquez or
William Faulkner. It all depends on the context.
12
Context, of course, is the key to recognizing the
linguistic equality of all languages and all dialects. Each
way of speaking has a valid and important function. We all
use different ways of speaking when talking to the baby or
to the boss, in writing a business letter or a poem. We speak
with our spouse one way and with a judge in another. And
on and on. The distribution of ways of speaking according
to context and function is related to membership in distinct
groups, ranging from small groups of family and friend-
ship to larger groups that extend communication beyond
the home and local community. On one side we find the
nostalgic language of our most intimate group. On another
side we may find the utility and even power of a variety that
allows us to operate with confidence among members of a
broader community.
Yet we frequently encounter other situations and other
communities where our way of speaking feels different and
inadequate. Our inability to communicate appropriately
in those situations makes us uncomfortable, sometimes
extremely uncomfortable. We interact comfortably only in
those communities we most identify with. That is, language
and identity go hand in hand. Where there exist differences
in identity there tend to be differences in language. And
vice versa.
A complex case of language mythology and identity
construction is found in the area of the NMCOSS survey.
As we noted earlier, the Spanish heritage inhabitants of
the region tend to see themselves as belonging to two
principal groups: (a) those from northern New Mexico
and southern Colorado, whose ancestors arrived in the
region prior to the twentieth century and (b) those resid-
ing principally in southern New Mexico, who have closer
ancestral ties with Mexico. The ethnic difference shows
up in their self-identifications in English. Northerners
tend to call themselves “Hispanic,” “Spanish American,”
or “Spanish” while Southerners prefer “Mexican” or
“Mexican American.”
In Spanish, on the other hand, both groups label
themselves as mexicanos (very occasionally Northerners
will refer to themselves as españoles ‘Spanish’). That use
of the same label does not signal commonality of ethnic-
ity, however. In talking about local foods, a particularly
astute and careful nonagenarian living in Medanales
in Río Arriba County, in northern New Mexico, caught
herself about to say something that she thought might
confuse the interviewer, so she attempted to explain:
(2-4) La comida mex—de nojotros. No quiero decir
que mexicano, porque no semos mexicanos
nojotros. Dicemos mexicanos, pero no semos.
chapter two
 México está al otro lado. ‘The food of us
Mex—of us. I don’t mean Mexican, because
we’re not Mexican. We say Mexicans, but we’re
not. Mexico’s over there on the other side [of
the border].’ (interview 219)
The one thing clarified by this explanation is the palpable
consciousness of two groups, regardless of the arbitrary
label conventionally employed.
If a need to differentiate is felt, a Northerner will often
resort to labeling the other group as mexicanos de México
(roughly equivalent to saying, ‘Mexican Mexicans’), as in
the following observation by a woman from Santa Fe:
(2-5) Mi ayuda era una muchacha mexicana de
México. ‘My help [in taking care of my husband]
was a Mexican girl from Mexico.’ (interview 108)
Finally, each group has a Spanish term, more or less
private, more or less derogatory, to designate the other.
Northerners have long used a traditional title of respect that
is somewhat more intimate than the more formal terms
Don and Doña, which are also used. This usage employs
a person’s first name preceded by Mano or Mana (short-
ened forms of the sibling terms hermano and hermana),
for example, Mano Ramón and Mana Luisa, a usage epito-
mized in the folk characters of countless jokes and stories,
Mano Cacahuate ‘Brother Peanut’ and Mana Cebolla ‘Sister
Onion.’ In direct address, the title alone in diminutive
form—Manito, Manita—is often used. Picking up on this
frequent epithet, Southerners (and many others) adopted
the term Manitos to refer to members of this distinctive
group. The granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, consul-
tant 237 grew up in the Southerner territory of La Junta,
Colorado, on the Arkansas River but at the time of being
interviewed had lived a dozen years in the Northerner
territory of the San Luis Valley. She describes the first time
the title was directed at her:
(2-6) La primera vez que me noté yo que alguien me
había llamado manita, ¡Ay manita! ¡Yo no soy
manita! ¡Jai, grama, me llamaron manita!
‘The first time I noticed that someone had
called me Manita, Oh Manita! I’m not a
Manita! Hey, Grandma, they called me a
Manita! (interview 237)
On the other side of this ethnic coin, perhaps the most
common Northerner term for the Southerners is Surumato
(sometimes Serumato). Attributions of an origin for this
New Mexican Spanish
label seem to be apocryphal. Most speculation suggests
it derives from a Mexican place name associated with a
group of immigrants, identified as Surumuato by Cobos
(2003) and Suruma by others. In her study of the Pachuco
argot, Coltharp (1965, 261) includes the apparently related
form surrumato as an adjective meaning “unsophisticated,
countrified,” and Galván and Teschner (1975, 86) treat this
word in Texas as a variant of zurumbático meaning “daffy,
screwy, slightly crazy; dumb, stupid, ignorant.” Whatever
the form of the word or its origin, this label for Southerners
is clearly not laudatory.
Two other labels for Southerners—Mateo and
Chúntaro—surfaced in the NMCOSS interviews. Example
2-7 comes from a seventy-eight-year-old man from Chama,
Colorado, and example 2-8 from a thirty-four-year-old
man from Pastura (near Santa Rosa), New Mexico.
(2-7) Mateo les dicen porque vienen del otro lado y
ellos a nosotros nos dicen los manitos. ‘They’re
called Mateo because they come from the
other side [of the border] and they call us
Manitos.’ (interview 211)
(2-8) Todos nos dicen manito y nosotros shúntaro.
‘They all call us Manito and we [call them]
Chúntaro.’ (interview 43)
Obviously, then, our consultants see themselves
as different kinds of Hispanics. And as in all societies,
perceptions of social difference are reflected in an array
of linguistic differences. For example, Southerners favor
the label chícharo for the legume ‘Pea’ while Northerners
favor alverjón. Map 1-2 clearly illustrates this point.
It is also to be expected with two such sharply delin-
eated groups that there exists a bit of competition. The
Northerners tend to feel socially superior by virtue of
their longer history of landownership and access to
economic and political power. The Southerners, those
representing more recent immigration, tend to have less
tradition of such material status. On the other hand, they
tend to have closer contact with Mexico and consequently
often have more advanced skills in Spanish and access to
the idea and reality of standard Spanish. That is, the near-
universal acceptance of myth 1 that nonstandard Spanish
is “bad” can give them an aura of possessing “good”
Spanish. Myth 1 bestows on them a less material but no
less powerful manifestation of status.
It is the Northerners, then, who are apt to display
a kind of inferiority complex about their speech. The
Southerners, with their stronger links to Mexico,
often have greater linguistic status, at least if they are
13
sufficiently self-confident to recognize this power. It is
perhaps a reaction to this feeling of linguistic inferiority
that Northerners tend to dress up their variety in another
myth, a historicity myth—the belief that the Spanish
they speak is a noble and pure descendant of Golden Age
Spanish, the language of Cervantes.
Myth 2: “New Mexican Spanish is the Spanish of
sixteenth-century Spain.” This myth is rampant. It is
reflected in such popular literature as John Nichols’s
novel, The Milagro Beanfield War (1976, 225):
(2-9) Pacheco could not stand the way Onofre,
reading aloud in Spanish pronounced his c’s and
z’s. He pronounced them with the Castilian th
sound, that is, with a lisp, an affectation peculiar
to many of the Miracle Valley’s old-timers,
whereas it could not be found farther south in
Mexico. The reason for this being that Onofre’s
and Seferino Pacheco’s ancestors had come from
Spain four centuries before, traveled to this
godforsaken place in the high Rockies, and then
been cut off from civilization for three hundred
years, thus maintaining many of the purities
in their Spanish language and in their Spanish
customs.
Such romantic ideas about the Castilian “purity” of these
people and their language are heard daily in New Mexico.
Those ideas are sadly in error.
Even the renowned Spanish linguist Manuel Alvar
could allow his lyricism to overwhelm his objectivity in
stating about New Mexican Spanish (2000, 27):
(2-10) La lengua es aquí arcaizante, como lo son los
cristos de palo con sus brazos articulados o los
santos vestidos de remotos soldados españoles, o
la emoción medieval de los romances religiosos
o las misiones—ya en ruinas—o tantas cosas
como evocan el occidente leonés o las tierras
luminosas de Andalucía. Todo supervivencias
de un pasado que se hermana en la lengua o
en la fe. ‘The language here is archaic, as are
the wooden figures of Christ with articulated
arms or the saints dressed like Spanish soldiers
of old, or the medieval emotion of religious
ballads or the mission churches—now in
ruins—or so many things in the way they evoke
the western part of León or the luminous lands
of Andalucía. All are survivals of a past that
harmonizes with the language or the faith.’
14
More objective is the interpretation of Juan Antonio
Trujillo, evincing his more personal connection to the
region: “[T]he romanticized image of New Mexico
Spanish as proof of a noble European cultural origin coex-
ists with increasing linguistic insecurity” (1997, 3–4).
The reality of New Mexican Spanish is much more
complex and quite different from a magical association
with Spain. That reality is accurately reflected in the
everyday labels that speakers of New Mexican Spanish
ordinarily employ to describe their ethnic and linguis-
tic identity: somos mexicanos ‘we are Mexican,’ hablamos
mexicano ‘we speak Mexican.’
The Spanish-heritage people of northern New Mexico
and southern Colorado have no more direct bloodline
links to Spain than do the inhabitants of Mexico or other
regions of the Americas. The majority of the first coloniz-
ers who came to New Mexico in 1598 were born not in
Spain but in Mexico or elsewhere in the Eurocentrically
labeled “New World.” And most of those who returned
to New Mexico after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt were also
“Americans,” natives of the New World. J. A. Trujillo’s
research leads him to conclude “that despite the New
Mexico Hispanics’ insistence, the majority of the original
colonist groups were not of European Spanish origin, but
rather mestizo immigrants of modest means recruited
along the colonial highway leading north from Mexico
City” (1997, 132). Indeed, the majority of those recruited
in Mexico City for this enterprise not only were born in
Mexico but also “were certainly the product of miscege-
nation” (Kessell, Hendricks, and Dodge 1995, 10). And
they were already speakers of a hybrid American Spanish
that had developed over nearly two centuries of what
John Lipski calls the “linguistic alchemy” (1994, 45) that
melded the varied dialects of persons brought together
from all over the Iberian Peninsula.
Moreover, there was a sometimes weak but always
continuous stream of Mexicans into Nuevo México
throughout the colonial period, during the Mexican
period, through the sixty years of status as a U.S. territory,
and since the incorporation of New Mexico as a state in
1912. Although the Northerners lived for centuries rela-
tively secluded from the rest of the Spanish-speaking world,
their isolation was not absolute. Their Spanish ties in both
culture and blood have been principally with Mexico.
Just as Northerners are not Spaniards, Traditional
Spanish is neither more Iberian nor more archaic than
other New World Spanishes. You can, of course, find an
occasional piece of linguistic evidence that supports the
myth. For example, the usual word for ‘Cabbage’ is col
in Spain, whereas it is the very different repollo in parts
chapter two
of Mexico, according to Lara et al. (1996) and numer-
ous people we consulted (although we have been told by
several other people that the norm in Mexico City is col).
In our survey, we received 254 preferences for col versus
only 61 for repollo. Map 2-1 shows that the Traditional
Spanish dialect prefers Spain’s term col (marked with
green circles). In contrast, the more common term in
Mexico, repollo (marked with red squares), is popular only
in the Border Spanish dialect area, that is, in those areas
with ties to northwestern Mexico, where it seems that
repollo is the norm and the term col is largely unknown.
But most of the linguistic reality is quite distinct
from the myth of an Iberian Spanish. The typical word for
‘Skirt’ in Traditional Spanish is nagua or naguas, one of
the earliest borrowings from a Native American language,
the Taino language of the Caribbean. An ‘Owl’ is a teco-
lote, a borrowing from the Aztec (or Nahuatl) language
of Mexico; hardly anyone in the NMCOSS region knows
the peninsular Spanish term buho. Like the rest of Latin
America and unlike Spain, the second person plural
pronoun vosotros and the verb forms associated with it
are never used in everyday speech. Like most of the rest
of Latin America and unlike central Spain, there is no
sound distinction for the written symbols y and ll nor for
s and z/c. Se cayó ‘he fell’ and se calló ‘he became silent’ are
pronounced alike in Mexican and New Mexican Spanish,
as are coser ‘sew’ and cocer ‘cook.’
Nor is Traditional Spanish particularly archaic.
Archaisms are typically defined as forms that occurred
in earlier periods of a language and that are no longer
considered acceptable in the “standard” language. There
are, in fact, lots of these archaisms in New Mexican
Spanish. But that is typical of colloquial Spanish every-
where. All varieties of Spanish derive from the peninsu-
lar Spanish of the sixteenth century, and all nonstandard
dialects retain features that have since been changed
or replaced in what is generally considered standard
Spanish. Archaisms heard in the speech of the common
people in other parts of the Spanish-speaking world are
also heard in New Mexico. Some examples of such pan-
Spanish archaisms are cuasi instead of the now standard
casi ‘almost’ (illustrated in example 2-11), onde instead of
donde ‘where,’ trujo for trajo ‘she brought,’ vide for vi ‘I
saw,’ and creiban for creían ‘they used to believe.’
But you’ll find in New Mexican Spanish just as many
or more “new” forms as “archaic” forms. You’ll find
newly created labels such as ratón volador (literally ‘flying
mouse’) instead of murciélago for ‘bat’ and altered forms
such as pader instead of pared for ‘wall.’ You’ll find words
borrowed from English such as flate ‘flat,’ from Aztec or
New Mexican Spanish
Nahuatl such as cuates ‘twins,’ from French fur traders
such as puela ‘skillet,’ and from local Pueblo Indians such
as oshá ‘a medicinal root.’
It is the contribution from Nahuatl, the language of
the Aztec Indians of central Mexico, that provides the
most palpable demonstration that New Mexican Spanish
is really Mexican Spanish, not “pure” Castilian Spanish.
Nahuatl contributed substantial numbers of lexical
items, which were brought to New Mexico by the early
colonists, as well as by subsequent immigrants. Many
of these Nahuatlisms are virtually the only labels used
in our survey area for such commonplace encounters as
chapulín for ‘grasshopper,’ chile for ‘chile pepper,’ cuates
for ‘twins,’ quelites for ‘wild spinach,’ tamal for ‘tamale,’
tecolote for ‘owl,’ zoquete for ‘mud,’ and zacate for ‘grass.’
Beyond Nahuatlisms, however, the close relation-
ship of Mexican Spanish and Traditional Spanish, the
profoundly “Mexican” nature of Traditional Spanish, is
evident throughout the linguistic system. Among many
other clear manifestations of this relationship are the
grammatical characteristics identified by Moreno de
Alba (1992b). Speakers of New Mexican Spanish do not
manifest leísmo and laísmo; they say lo vi ‘I saw him,’ not
le vi, and a ella le di la manzana ‘I gave the apple to her,’
not la di. They use the -ra form of the imperfect subjunc-
tive to the exclusion of the -se form; they say querían que
saliera ‘they wanted him to leave,’ not saliese. Moreover,
the absence of the second person singular pronoun vos
ties Traditional Spanish to mainstream Mexican Spanish,
distinguishing both from much of the rest of Latin
America. In brief, New Mexican Spanish belongs to what
Lozano (1977) labels a Mexican Spanish “macro-dialect.”
But in Traditional Spanish there are linguistic
features that are neither particularly Castilian nor partic-
ularly Mexican. There are many independently devel-
oped words and constructions, such as ganso for ‘turkey,’
santopié for ‘centipede,’ vivemos instead of vivimos ‘we
live,’ and cantábanos instead of cantábamos ‘we were
singing.’ A typical feature of Traditional Spanish pronun-
ciation is called the “paragogic /e/,” a vowel that is occa-
sionally added to the end of words, for example, hablare
for hablar ‘speak’ and ratone for ratón ‘mouse.’ Also typi-
cal is the routine pronunciation of /s/ at the beginning
of a syllable or at the end of a word, as an aspiration like
the English h, which we represent with the equivalent
Spanish letter j in the following examples:
(2-11) Cuaji todoj loj amigoj míoj hablan loj doj
idiomaj. ‘Almost all of my friends speak both
languages.’ (interview 214)
15
2-1. ‘Cabbage’

16 chapter two
 (2-12) Yo bebo té de oshá, de manzanilla, de todoj
ejos remedios bebo yo. ‘I drink tea of wild
celery root, of chamomile; I drink all of those
remedies.’ (interview 20)
(2-13) No máj anda buscando de hajer mal.
‘He just goes around looking to make trouble.’
(interview 20)
The Spanish of Cervantes? This myth does not stand
up to scrutiny. The Traditional Spanish of New Mexico
and southern Colorado is a very special, unique dialect
of Spanish. Like all dialects, it is not exactly like any
other dialect. And like all dialects, it is perfectly suited to
the needs of the particular community of speakers. For
talking with grandparents. For telling jokes and stories
involving Mano Cacahuate and Mana Cebolla. For pray-
ing before those wooden figures of Christ. For explain-
ing recipes for sopa and burruñates. It is, in brief, the
distinctive linguistic heritage of most Hispanics of the
NMCOSS region.
Myth 3: It is widely assumed that, in recognition of this
distinctive heritage, “Spanish is an official language of New
Mexico.” Many, many people, both Hispanics and Anglos,
believe that the state constitution gives Spanish special
legal status in perpetuity. This belief, too, is a myth.
The myth that Spanish enjoys some advantaged posi-
tion in New Mexico seems to be based on two sections
that deal explicitly with language in the constitution that
the state of New Mexico adopted upon admission to the
United States in 1912. Article XII, Section 12 of that consti-
tution specifies that
(2-14) [t]he legislature shall provide for the training
of teachers in the normal schools or otherwise
so that they may become proficient in both the
English and Spanish languages, to qualify them
to teach Spanish-speaking pupils . . . and shall
provide proper means and methods to facilitate
the teaching of the English language and other
branches of learning to such pupils. (Adams
and Brink 1990, 322)
Focusing on just the first two clauses of this section might
lead one to believe that all teachers are required to know
Spanish. However, a careful reading of the entirety of the
section, all of the important content of which is excerpted
in example 2-14, leads to a very different interpretation.
The intent of the framers of the constitution, as supported
by two attorney general opinions in 1968 and 1971, was to
assure that (a) all students learn English, not Spanish, and
New Mexican Spanish
(b) teachers of Spanish-speaking children be given the
opportunity to become proficient in Spanish. There has
never been a constitutional requirement that any teacher
must speak Spanish.
The second part of the constitution that deals with
language is Article XX, Section 12, which provides for the
publication of laws in both languages:
(2-15) For the first twenty years after this
constitution goes into effect all laws passed by
the legislature shall be published in both the
English and Spanish languages.
Note the time restriction of this requirement to the
first twenty years. In fact, however, the regulation was
extended in 1931 for another ten years and in 1943 for an
additional ten years, but without any funding authorized
(S. P. Nichols 1989, 42–43). There is now no New Mexico
requirement that laws (or anything else) be published in
Spanish (although a federal law, the Voting Rights Act
Amendments of 1975, now requires that voting materi-
als be available in Spanish and other minority languages
under certain conditions).
In brief, although the Spanish language surely holds
a special place in the hearts and minds of the majority
of New Mexicans and southern Coloradans, it enjoys no
official status and no special legal protection in the state
of New Mexico. It has to fend for itself. Unfortunately, it
hasn’t been able to fend for itself very well, as we see in
dealing with the next myth.
Myth 4: “English is good; Spanish is not good.”
Regardless of the stature of Spanish as one of the world’s
major languages with respect to number of speakers and
documented history, in the NMCOSS area and in the
United States more generally, some people proclaim and
many others harbor the sneaky suspicion that the Spanish
language is decidedly inferior to English.
This myth has no basis in any kind of linguis-
tic measure, of course. Like myth 1, it is based solely on
social judgments, judgments directed not at the language
but at the group of people who speak that language. Even
the most casual observer of human society in the U.S.
Southwest will note that the typical Spanish speaker
manifests less valued material trappings and lower social
status than the typical English speaker. Ergo, that magnif-
icent human capacity to establish contrastive categories
leads some to conclude that the English language must
be superior to the Spanish language. That English is good
and Spanish is bad. That English speakers are good and
Spanish speakers are bad.
17
 The social inequalities associated with speaking
Spanish foster this dangerous myth and feed its norm
enforcement role. Many Hispanics, particularly the
young and impressionable, buy into the power of the
myth and perceive Spanish as loaded with all sorts of
negative baggage. Thus, a twenty-one-year-old woman
from Las Cruces, New Mexico, reports in her interview
on a support strategy she adopted with friends in high
school for dealing with new acquaintances:
(2-16) Yo decía, “No les digan que sé español.” . . .
Si ya sabías el español es que tus padres eran
mojados. ‘I would say, “Don’t tell them I know
Spanish.” . . . If you knew Spanish it meant your
parents were wetbacks.’ (interview 149)
Mojado and its English equivalent wetback are highly
derogatory labels that originally referred to those who
entered the United States illegally by swimming (or some-
times just wading) across the Río Grande, but the terms
are sometimes generalized to refer to legal immigrants
as well. For this young woman, the desire to avoid such
labeling led to the desire to deny Spanish.
Denial of Spanish is, of course, just one response
to the denigrating force of myth 4. The more frequent
response is probably a mixture of positive and nega-
tive feelings toward Spanish. Such ambivalent attitudes
are expressed in the following excerpt from a letter to
the editor of the Albuquerque Journal by a confident but
somewhat misinformed Hispanic (May 19, 1994):
(2-17) I am bilingual, and my life would not be any
different, if I did not speak Spanish. I am glad,
however, to be able to speak two languages. My
daughters do not speak Spanish, and I have no
guilt feelings about it. My wife and I wanted
them to speak good English, since this is the
official [sic] language of our country.
Does this man buy into the myth? Partly. Well, he
might say, “I don’t think Spanish is bad, though some of
you folks do, but I agree that English is better.” In addi-
tion, he is off-base in bringing up another linguistic myth.
English is not the official language of the United States—at
least not yet in spite of the many misguided efforts to make
it so. (See Marshall 1986 and Adams and Brink 1990 for
a broad discussion of official languages versus national
languages and the attempts to make English the official
language of the United States.) English is without doubt,
however, universally recognized as the national language of
18
the United States. It is the dominant language of power and
prestige and the biggest threat to the survival of Spanish
(and all other languages) in this country.
Reinforcement of the myth of the inadequacy of
Spanish vis-à-vis English crops up in all aspects of life.
Most U.S.-born Spanish speakers in the NMCOSS region
have been educated exclusively in English and therefore
feel less comfortable, less competent, speaking Spanish
in many situations. Besides, they hear outsiders put down
their Spanish as uneducated and deficient. Still sadder is
the fact that proficient speakers within the local commu-
nity often laugh at those, the young in particular, who for
whatever reason have failed to develop decent commu-
nicative competence in Spanish. For more and more
Hispanics, English becomes the safer language, Spanish
a language to avoid.
Myth 5: Well, even so, Spanish has been strongly
rooted in this area for four centuries. “New Mexican
Spanish is in no danger of being lost.” Au contraire! The
use of Spanish and fluency in the language both locally and
across the United States is declining before our very eyes.
Only a quarter of the NMCOSS consultants (79 of 299) were
willing to rate their ability in Spanish as “good.” Over half
(180 of 329) were unable to come up with a Spanish word
for ‘Dragonfly.’ Nearly a third (102 of 311) could provide no
Spanish label for ‘Ankle’! And the NMCOSS consultants
are a restricted subsample of the Hispanic population; only
Spanish speakers are included.
The positive evaluation of English and the negative
evaluation of Spanish, together with the social inequali-
ties that seem to go hand in hand with Spanish, conspire
to cause many to give up Spanish entirely. Even for most
who retain fluency, English is their most commonly
used language and Spanish serves as a communicative
tool only for intimate situations associated with family
and close friends, and sometimes the immediate neigh-
borhood or small village. Naturally, a decline in use of
a language leads to a decline in ability to speak it. With
each successive generation, proficiency in Spanish and the
contexts for its use dwindle, eventually to zero. A central
piece of as much as four centuries of local ethnic heri-
tage, the ethnic language, is lost to increasing numbers
of Hispanics.
The fact that the 2000 U.S. Census shows that
persons of Hispanic ethnicity have grown to 42% of the
New Mexico population (a major factor in the reduction
of the Anglo population once again to minority status)
and to 17% of the Colorado population does not mean that
the Spanish language is being maintained in this region.
Maintenance of Spanish requires historical stability in
chapter two
the use of the language, the consistent transmission of
the language from one generation to the next. That has
not been happening for a couple of generations in New
Mexico and southern Colorado. Utilizing informa-
tion about a large number of the NMCOSS consultants,
Bernal-Enríquez (2002) provides a dramatic demonstra-
tion of shift across the generations in both Spanish ability
and the actual use of Spanish.
The rapidity with which Southwest Hispanics over
the past half century are shifting to English and abandon-
ing Spanish rivals the loss of the ethnic mother tongue by
practically any ethnic group in documented history. This
shift is attested in small community studies such as the
research by Roger Thompson in East Austin, Texas (1971),
by Leroy Ortiz in the village of Arroyo Seco, New Mexico
(1975), by Alan Hudson-Edwards and Garland Bills in
the Martíneztown neighborhood of Albuquerque (1982),
and by Lucinda Pease-Alvarez in a California commu-
nity (1993). The abandonment of Spanish is also demon-
strated in large-scale investigations based on U.S. Census
figures such as those by López (1978), Veltman (1988), Solé
(1990), Bills (1989), Bills, Hernández Chávez, and Hudson
(1995), Bills, Hudson, and Hernández Chávez (2000),
Hernández Chávez, Bills, and Hudson (1996), Hudson,
Bills, and Hernández Chávez (1995), and Hart-González
and Feingold (1990). As Yolanda Solé concludes (1990, 72),
“The evidence of actual large-scale, on-going language
shift is obvious.”
The U.S. Census provides information on language
use only in the home. These data can be used in several
ways to measure the maintenance or loss of Spanish. One
measure could be called “language loyalty,” which repre-
sents the proportion of the ethnic group that continues
to use the ethnic heritage language. The 2000 Census,
for example, reveals that 70% of the Hispanics in New
Mexico claimed to speak Spanish at home. Impressive as
this proportion may seem, it is important to recognize
that maintenance of Spanish is not absolute. Nearly a
third of Spanish-heritage New Mexicans have abandoned
any use of Spanish in the home. In Colorado, the situation
is worse, with only 64% of Hispanics reporting Spanish
as a home language. Moreover, a study by McCollough
and Jenkins (2005) of the last three decennial censuses for
Colorado shows an especially sharp decline in Spanish
language loyalty across the southern third of Colorado
that includes the NMCOSS area.
Remember that these census figures refer to language
use at home. The home is typically the last domain of
an ethnic language that is being abandoned. As New
Mexico poet and historian E. A. “Tony” Mares noted at
New Mexican Spanish
a presentation a few years ago, “If you confine Spanish to
the home, you consign it to its death.”
Still using 2000 Census data, we can gain a sharper
perspective on the attrition of Spanish by measuring
language loyalty separately for youth and adults, a simu-
lation of generational behavior showing change over time.
In New Mexico, for example, while 78% of Hispanics age
eighteen and older claim Spanish in the home, only 49%
of those younger than eighteen do so, a precipitous drop.
The situation is no better in Colorado, where only 70%
of adults and 50% of the young speak Spanish at home.
Thus, not only is there widespread loss of Spanish, but
abandonment gains momentum among the young, those
who will figure prominently in determining the mother
tongue of the succeeding generation.
How can myth 5 hold sway in the face of such facts?
Well, first of all, ignorance is the hotbed of mythology. But
the appearance of language maintenance that so many
think they see can be ascribed to one factual phenom-
enon: the continuing heavy immigration from south of
the border. Thus, the examination of data from earlier
censuses led Hudson, Bills, and Hernández Chávez (1995,
182) to conclude that
(2-18) maintenance of Spanish in the Southwest . . .
is heavily dependent upon a steady transfusion
of speakers from Mexico to communities
in the United States, and [our findings]
offer no warrant for the survival of Spanish
beyond a point when such speakers are no
longer available to replace speakers north
of the border lost through mortality or
linguistic assimilation.
The same conclusion appears still more obvious in
figures from the latest census concerning the foreign-
born. Of those Hispanic New Mexicans claiming use of
Spanish in the home in 2000, more than one in five (22%)
were actually born in other countries. In Colorado nearly
half (44%) were. The census does not provide information
on subsequent generations, but we can reasonably assume
that the immigrant generation and its children (who are
almost certain to speak some Spanish at home with their
parents) account for the majority of Spanish speakers in
this region. This interpretation accords very well with the
findings of other researchers such as Pease-Alvarez (1993)
and López (1982).
Furthermore, research by Bills, Hudson, and
Hernández Chávez (2000) indicates that the loss of
Spanish begins with the very addition of English to the
19
linguistic repertoire of the individual, typically initiated
in the immigrant generation itself. Although two studies
by Mora, Villa, and Dávila (2005, 2006) are focused on
showing that Hispanic children maintain their heritage
language more strongly than other ethnic groups, their
careful census-based research also demonstrates that
acquisition of English and indeed some loss of Spanish
occurs already among immigrant children.
The shift process has become particularly acute
among the Northerners, who see themselves as very
distinct from the immigrant population, due in part to
myth 2. As one sophisticated fifty-one-year-old man from
Pueblo, Colorado, who had been raised fully steeped in
the “Manito” culture confesses,
(2-19) Sabía que no era español, pero también no
quería ser mexicano. ‘I knew I wasn’t really
Spanish, but I also didn’t want to be Mexican.’
(interview 304)
The too-frequent unwillingness of native-born His­-
panics, especially Northerners, to adopt an attitude of
20
solidarity with the immigrant population deprives them
of one important opportunity to maintain use of their
heritage language (see Bills 2005 for a fuller discussion
of this issue).
We see, then, that even with an influx of Spanish-
speaking immigrants, the shift to English is inexorable.
The reasons for the shift are moderately clear in broad
outline: social inequalities. The census research by
David López uncovers “clear associations between using
Spanish and low socioeconomic status” (1982, 66), and
such findings are repeated in study after study. Hispanics
who claim Spanish as a home language tend to be less
educated and have lower income than those who speak
only English at home. These facts are not just derived
from scientific research, but are apparent to everyone.
They are influential facts that drive the shift to English.
In sum, the Spanish language is fading fast in New
Mexico and southern Colorado. Prospects for its survival
over the next two generations except in the speech of
immigrants cannot be enhanced by complacent belief in
its good health. It demonstrably is not healthy. Traditional
Spanish in particular is a dying dialect.
chapter two
 Chap ter 3
The New Mexico–Colorado
Spanish Survey
• This book derives from our long-held fascination
with the Spanish language of this region. Vigil is
a long-time resident of Albuquerque. His connection
to Spanish was forged while spending summers with
his grandmother in Clayton, New Mexico. His interest
intensified at the University of New Mexico when he was
introduced to Aurelio Espinosa’s exceptional pioneering
work on early twentieth-century New Mexican Spanish.
He has had the privilege of being able to pursue that
interest. When Bills arrived at the University of New
Mexico in 1969, one of his first assignments was to assist
in developing a placement test for the series of Spanish
courses designed for regional Hispanic students who
had acquired some Spanish at home. This experience
with New Mexican Spanish led to a career-long research
interest in this variety. His passion included publication
of an early proposal for a sweeping dialect survey (Bills
and Ornstein 1976) that was finally realized in the New
Mexico–Colorado Spanish Survey (NMCOSS) project.
Our aspirations converged in the late 1980s when,
after two decades together in the same department at
the University of New Mexico, we put our heads together
to plan and carry out a pilot study, which resulted in
several funding proposals. We were finally able to initi-
ate the New Mexico–Colorado Spanish Survey in June of
1991 with a grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities that supported data collection and analysis
for three and a half years. Our intent with this project was
to document as comprehensively as possible the Spanish
language spoken by U.S.-born Hispanics throughout the
state of New Mexico and across sixteen counties of south-
ern Colorado.
We had two central objectives in mind as we planned
the NMCOSS project. One objective was to establish at
the University of New Mexico a public archive containing
all the primary data—tape recordings and paper docu-
ments—as well as other materials produced by the proj-
ect. We wanted this archive to present a realistic sampling
of New Mexican Spanish as spoken at the end of the twen-
tieth century. To meet this objective, we needed to assure
that the consultants represented regional and social diver-
sity, that they displayed a variety of performance styles,
and that they described individual cultural experiences
and interpretations.
The second objective was to produce this single-
volume nontraditional linguistic atlas. This objective is
21
concerned with documenting variation in the Spanish of
the region, primarily geographical variation. The impor-
tant steps were to specify the spatial distribution of the
target sample, to characterize the kinds of persons to be
interviewed, to collect sufficient identical linguistic data
to permit explicit identification of similarities and differ-
ences, and to establish procedures for efficient analysis
and interpretation of the data.
The following paragraphs describe the major proce-
dures and methodologies adopted to realize the two
objectives.
Determination of Localities
Beginning with our earliest planning, the geographi-
cal focus for the project has been the Spanish-speaking
population of northern New Mexico that traces its roots
to the original settlement in 1598. We wished to include
all of New Mexico, however, to permit us to explore not
only the spread of this Traditional variety but also the pres-
ence of the Border Spanish that has resulted from more
recent immigration, as well as the contact between the
two dialects. Coverage of the entire state also brings in the
metropolitan areas of Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Santa
Fe and other urban areas where the impact of both English
and the Spanish of Mexico is particularly manifest.
Coverage of Colorado was constrained by practical
considerations. On one hand, the Spanish of many areas
of the southern third of Colorado represents fairly recent
settlement, beginning only in the mid-nineteenth century,
by speakers of Traditional New Mexican Spanish. This
fact necessitates its inclusion in the study. On the other
hand, nearly half (twenty-eight) of the sixty-three coun-
ties of Colorado had fewer than 200 individuals above
age eighteen who reported Spanish as a home language
in 1980 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1983, the most recent
census data available when the project was designed).
We decided to limit the survey to sixteen counties across
the southern part of the state (see map 1-1). These sixteen
counties had sizable Hispanic populations and included
all but two of the Colorado counties with more than 10%
who claimed to speak Spanish in the home. Although
these sixteen counties are predominantly rural, the area
contains one major metropolitan area, Pueblo, and several
smaller cities with strong Hispanic concentrations.
The geographical scope of the project allows us to
study not only the surviving dialect of Lope Blanch’s
“Traditional Southwest Spanish” (1987) long established
in northern New Mexico, but all other manifestations of
the Spanish language in a region that covers more than
22
150,000 square miles of conservative rural areas and
dynamic metropolitan centers. According to the 1990
Census, which describes the situation closest to the time
of the NMCOSS data collection, the total area contained
some 355,000 persons above the age of eighteen who were
reported to speak Spanish at home (U.S. Bureau of the
Census 1990). The 357 persons interviewed in our survey,
therefore, provide a sampling ratio of approximately 1 in
1,000. The sampling ratio is actually even better because
we interviewed only native-born adults and the census’s
home-language figure also includes the foreign-born.
Map 3-1 presents the grid that served as a basis for
sampling. We divided the entire area into three regions:
a central region roughly representing the Río Grande
drainage area, and western and eastern regions on each
side. We then divided these regions into a total of twelve
sectors of roughly comparable geographical size (ranging
from approximately nine thousand to fifteen thousand
square miles each) based on county boundaries. We took
into consideration geography and settlement history as
interpreted from such standard sources as Erickson and
Smith (1985) for Colorado and Williams (1986) for New
Mexico. Happily, the political boundaries of counties
tend to reflect social history and, in turn, the settlement
patterns of that social history tend to be closely associated
with linguistic variation.
The initial Hispanic colonization in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries took place along the Río Grande
in sectors 5 and 6, with most of the population located
between the present-day town of Socorro and the Río
Grande’s confluence with the Chama River just north of
Santa Fe, although there were some ranchos (small farms)
as far north as Taos. The Hispanic population remained
small through this period. Oñate’s original band of colo-
nists numbered only several hundred. During the first
eight decades of colonization, the Hispanic population is
generally considered to have reached no more than 2,500
at any one time (see Williams 1986, 97; Gutiérrez 1991, 92,
table 2.1), although Knaut (1995, 134) affirms that it could
have grown only to about 1,000 by the 1680 Pueblo Revolt.
For the 1693–94 resettlement, more than 100 additional
families were recruited in the Zacatecas and Mexico City
areas to join the diminished number of settlers returning
to their homeland.
During the course of the eighteenth century, the
Hispanic population gradually increased to nearly
20,000 (Gutiérrez 1991, 167, table 4.2) or perhaps 25,000
(Williams 1986, 101) and spread out to include larger
portions of sectors 5 and 6. Ranchos were established in
sector 7, and there were also expansions into the eastern
chapter three
 3-1. Geographical sectors and targeted locations

The New Mexico-Colorado Spanish Survey 23

plains (sector 9). Finally, mining enterprises led to the
establishment of a couple of settlements in the south-
ern part of the western region (sector 3). Expansion
into other areas was held in check by the paucity of reli-
able water sources, the need for defense from nomadic
Indian incursions, and the Spanish Crown’s strangle-
hold on trade that permitted commerce solely through
Chihuahua, Mexico, via the Río Grande corridor.
The replacement of Spanish authority by Mexican
authority in the early nineteenth century broke the trade
monopoly held by Chihuahua. Trading routes were estab-
lished with the United States, and settlers spread out in all
directions from the original core areas of colonization. By
1850 the Spanish-speaking population in New Mexico had
increased to 60,000 (Abbott 1976, 38; Gutiérrez 1991, 167).
Acquisition of the region by the United States in
1848 accelerated the opening up of new areas to settlers.
Hispanic colonization of Colorado in sector 4 was under-
taken by people moving north from sector 5, with the
“first permanent Hispano settlement . . . at San Luis in
1851” (Abbott 1976, 42). In the latter part of the nine-
teenth century, the Homestead Act, the pacification of
marauding Indian tribes, increased mining interest, and
the establishment of railroad lines stimulated Hispanic
expansion into all parts of the territory, with the excep-
tion of Indian and government land.
The twentieth century brought the local Spanish into
increasingly close contact with two powerful linguistic
forces: English and Mexican Spanish. The greatest impact
of the English-speaking population has been in sector 1, in
the eastern plains of sectors 8, 11, and 12, and in and around
the larger urban areas. Non-Hispanics far outnumber
Hispanics in the northwest and in the southeast plains. On
the other hand, the strongest influence of Mexican immi-
gration has been along the southern border with Mexico
(sectors 3 and 7), along the Arkansas River in eastern
Colorado (sector 8), in the large urban areas, and in the
cities in the eastern plains region, especially sector 12.
Having established the geographical grid based on
these historical considerations, the next step was to iden-
tify more specifically the areas we felt needed to be docu-
mented. To ensure geographical breadth in the sample, we
determined to identify at least four localities as sampling
targets within each of the twelve sectors. But of course,
these sectors are far from evenly populated. Large areas
of both states are mountainous or desert regions that
are completely uninhabited or only sparsely populated.
And approximately one-fifth of the region is comprised
of Indian reservations. Moreover, in New Mexico, a
single small county, Bernalillo (which includes the city
24
of Albuquerque), contained at the time of our survey over
one-third of the state’s population.
In addition, the Hispanic population is itself quite
unevenly distributed. It represents over 90% of the total
population in some areas and only marginal concentra-
tions in others. There were, for example, fewer than 7,000
adult Spanish speakers in sector 10 but nearly 113,000
in sector 6, where Albuquerque is located. Sector 6 had
twice as many Spanish speakers as any other sector in the
survey. Because the sectors vary so greatly with regard to
the size of the Spanish-speaking population, we decided
to select an additional fifteen localities in the more popu-
lous sectors.
The targets selected in each sector represent areas
showing the highest proportions of Spanish speakers; we
assumed that in areas of high Hispanic density, individ-
uals may use Spanish with a variety of people in diverse
situations and, therefore, potentially have a moderately
well-developed repertoire in Spanish. The target areas were
identified using information from the 1980 Census supple-
mented by educated guesswork. That census provides
Spanish-home-language data only for counties, cities, and
towns with populations of 2,500 or more. It also provides
information on the Hispanic origin population (which
is not necessarily Spanish speaking) for all incorporated
places, as well as for “county divisions.” Such information
proved very helpful in targeting rural localities.
Several examples will illustrate our use of census
information. McKinley County (bottom of sector 1) had
4,200 Spanish-home-language claimants. Following
a rough criterion of identifying one locality per 5,000
Spanish speakers, we definitely wanted a site in McKinley
County. Fully 87% of this county’s Spanish speakers
lived in Gallup, so it was easy to set this city as a target.
Similarly, in Luna County (bottom right of sector 3) 80%
of the 5,500 Spanish-home-language claimants lived
in Deming. Moreover, in the two-thirds of the county
south of Deming there were only 476 persons of Spanish
origin. Deming had to be a target. On the other hand, in
Taos County (top right of sector 5) only 17% of the 11,500
Spanish speakers lived in Taos, the largest town in the
county. Of the seven county divisions, the two in the
extreme south had the highest Hispanic density (about
90%). Accordingly, we targeted one locality in the far
south and another in the north, possibly the town of Taos
or preferably the somewhat more densely Hispanic village
of Questa north of Taos.
We used the same procedure in counties where there
were no towns with a population of at least 2,500. Mora
County (middle of sector 9) is entirely rural. The single
chapter three
incorporated place, Wagon Mound, had a total popu-
lation of just 416. We wanted to identify a locality in
Mora County, since it contained 3,343 Spanish speakers.
Besides, fully 86% of its population was Spanish speaking.
Of the county’s two census divisions, the one covering
the western quarter of the county contained nearly 75%
of the Hispanic population. Consequently, western Mora
County was targeted for inclusion in the survey.
In this way, then, we identified sixty-three general
localities in which to conduct interviews. Fifty-two of
these localities are in New Mexico and eleven in south-
ern Colorado. These targets are indicated by red circles
on map 3-1.
Selection of Consultants
The next task was to specify the characteristics of the people
to be interviewed. We set as requirements for all intervie-
wees that they were to meet three basic criteria. First, they
had to be adults. One reason for this requirement is that a
person’s dialect is quite malleable through childhood but
tends to become fairly well fixed by adulthood. In addition,
adult status is required for purposes of providing informed
consent to have recorded speech used for research and
placed in a public archive. In fact, however, the final tally
of persons interviewed does include 1 minor (consultant
329), a fifteen-year-old whose consent was provided by her
mother, who was also interviewed.
Second, every consultant had to have been born and
raised in the region they represent. In traditional dialect
geography, it was considered desirable to interview only
those who had spent their entire lives in the immediate
vicinity of their birthplace. It becomes increasingly diffi-
cult to find such persons in a highly mobile society such as
that in the United States. Furthermore, it is a too restrictive
requirement for a survey such as ours that seeks to docu-
ment all aspects of the reality of New Mexican Spanish.
Being born and raised in one locality was considered suffi-
cient for the formation of one’s basic dialect.
It needs to be noted, however, that one non-native
slipped in as an interviewee. She is a sixty-five-year-old
woman who was born across the Mexican border in the
state of Chihuahua. She came to the United States only as
an adult, at the age of twenty-two. However, she has lived
in New Mexico in the far southern town of La Mesa for
forty-three years. Also, her husband was born and raised
in La Mesa. As it happens, her linguistic behavior blends
in perfectly with her neighbors in the Mesilla Valley, so
we decided to leave this exceptional person in the data-
base. Nevertheless, we have highlighted this woman in
The New Mexico-Colorado Spanish Survey
every map, marking her location at the bottom of the map
just across the border.
The third criterion was that the consultants had to
have acquired Spanish to some extent in their homes
during childhood. Our intent here was to exclude persons
who learned Spanish strictly as a second language via
classroom instruction or foreign experience. As we will
see, the extent to which Spanish was acquired at home is
highly variable and many consultants had broadened their
Spanish through study and travel, but both facts reflect
important parts of the reality of New Mexican Spanish.
In addition to these basic criteria, we desired to have
broad representation for age and sex. Recognizing that age
differences often reflect language change over time, and
wanting to have some balance in the sexes, we set a goal to
interview 6 consultants in each target area: 1 female and
1 male in each of three age groups (18–39, 40–60, and over
60). In practice, however, interviews were arranged infor-
mally through the project team’s networks of contacts.
Consequently, there were deviations from the desiderata
in coverage of localities as well as in the age and sex distri-
butions. To cite a couple of extreme examples, we never
managed to secure an interview with anyone representing
the Lordsburg area (the most southwest target in sector
3), and all 5 persons interviewed in Catron County were
males and none were in the youngest age group.
We did not include any socioeconomic consider-
ations as specific criteria for consultant selection. Social
class, income, and such are often strongly associated with
language variation in monolingual areas, as documented,
for example, in such classic studies as Labov (1966) for
the English of New York City, and Cedergren (1973) for
the Spanish of Panama. However, in the bilingual popu-
lation of our study, socioeconomic factors appear to be
weakly associated with variation in Spanish, which has
the status of a minority language. Here, the use of more
careful speech for more formal circumstances tends to be
associated with English. Colloquial Spanish, the Spanish
of home and community, is adequate to most needs of the
average Hispanic.
This is not to say, nevertheless, that there are no value
judgments associated with the different varieties of Spanish
available. There are indeed such perceptions of “goodness,”
as we previously discussed regarding linguistic myths and
as Kravitz (1985) has demonstrated in her study of the
Spanish of an Albuquerque barrio. And these linguistic
values are certainly manifest in the NMCOSS recordings.
The 357 persons interviewed represent a wide variety
of backgrounds and socioeconomic levels. Furthermore,
the interviews collected a broad range of information on
25
education, occupation, income, other indicators of social
status, and attitudes toward English and Spanish. We
tap into some of these characteristics for analysis in this
book, especially in part 4.
The Interview Schedule
The interview is, of course, the critical part of any data
collection process concerned with language. We took
pains to design an interview instrument that would
provide control yet allow flexibility, giving the field
workers considerable latitude to adapt to the needs and
interests of the person being interviewed. The interview
begins with a brief list of questions about the consul-
tant’s background and language use. It concludes with a
short Spanish reading task and a switch to English for a
couple of minutes, both intended to secure some second-
ary information on range of linguistic proficiency. In
between is the linguistic core of the interview, designed to
secure two kinds of data in alternating segments: specific
linguistic elicitation and free conversation.
The production of a linguistic atlas requires that the
consultants provide comparable data, that is, the same
linguistic features produced under the same circum-
stances. The collection of such highly comparable data in
a way that permits easy tabulation is the purpose of the
specific elicitation component. This component includes
just over 800 items, which is comparable to that of other
atlas projects, for example, 1,000 for the Atlas lingüístico
de México, or ALM (Lope Blanch 1970b; Lope Blanch et
al. 1990–2000), 1,350 for the Atlas lingüístico-etnográfico
de Colombia, or ALEC (Montes Giraldo 1964, Flórez et
al. 1983), 445 for the excellent survey of Puerto Rico by
Navarro Tomás (1948), and 711 for the Linguistic atlas of
the Gulf States (Pederson 1974, Pederson et al. 1974, 1986).
The specific elicitation questionnaire for the NMCOSS
was designed to primarily get information about word
choice, but features of the sound system and grammatical
constructions are also included. The questionnaire items
represent a selection from three major sources: (1) those
we knew from experience to show variation within the
region; (2) those contained in the questionnaire of the Atlas
lingüístico de México, as adapted in 1988 for the proposed
Southwest Spanish Project (see Lope Blanch 1990b); and
(3) those documented for earlier periods by Hills (1906),
Espinosa (1909, 1911–13, 1914–15), and other works cited in
Teschner, Bills, and Craddock (1975). Many items are, of
course, represented in all three sources.
Most of these items were elicited by means of pictures
and real objects, which were grouped into semantic
26
categories (colors, birds, domesticated animals, foods,
clothing, etc.). Visual elicitation assures that consultants
respond to the same stimulus. It’s also considerably more
efficient than the traditional oral elicitation that results in
the investigator producing ten words or so for each word
elicited from the subject whose speech is being investi-
gated (Underwood 1972, 216). Some items, however, espe-
cially those concerning grammatical phenomena, were
elicited by traditional verbal techniques such as sentence
completion (e.g., Una persona que tiene barriga grande es
. . . ‘A person who has a big belly is . . . ’ to elicit the derived
form, either barrigudo or barrigón) and direct choice
among alternatives (e.g., ¿Dice usted el mar o la mar? ‘Do
you say el mar or la mar?’ to determine gender assign-
ment for specific words). Furthermore, taking advantage
of the bilingual character of this population, we occa-
sionally employed translation from English where other
methods would have been too unreliable or inefficient.
The second major source of primary linguistic data is
the “free conversation” component. Throughout the inter-
view session, the consultant was encouraged to expound
on topics of their greatest interest and knowledge. The
flexible interview schedule permitted the interviewer to
pursue topics according to their interest to the consultant,
although there were also specific topics to be covered in
every interview. The kinds of topics pursued were personal
history, childhood games, leisure activities of youth, adult
work activities, dangerous and humorous moments in the
consultant’s life, foods and food preparation, and prospects
for the maintenance of New Mexican Spanish.
It was expected that the specific elicitation compo-
nent would require about an hour and a half, and we
hoped that each interview would include at least an hour
of guided conversation speech. In practice, however,
although the typical interview did indeed last two and
a half to three hours, the length of the individual inter-
views was highly variable. Some lasted only an hour or so,
sometimes due to laconic speakers, or the unwillingness
or inability of the consultant to focus on the specific elici-
tation procedures. At times, the interview was stopped
in midstream and the interviewer could not schedule a
return interview to complete the questionnaire. To exem-
plify with an extreme case, one elderly man had to cut the
interview short because he was ill, and he died before a
follow-up session could be scheduled.
On the other hand, many interviews far exceeded
the average length. A couple of interviews lasted a full
eight hours of tape-recorded material! The longer inter-
views with particularly loquacious speakers often had
to be carried out in two or more sessions. For example,
chapter three
María Dolores Gonzales recalls the following incident
that occurred as she was interviewing her father (inter-
view 6, native of El Bonito, New Mexico):
(3-1) At the time he was eighty-two years old and
was fairly alert. Because my father was from the
cuento [‘story, tale’] generation, the interview
took eight hours to complete. He loved telling
his stories about the brujas [‘witches’], the
dance contests, and his life as a rancher. It must
have been after the first two hours—we had
not covered quite a bit of the material, when
suddenly he motions to me to turn off the tape
recorder. He looked rather serious, so I did.
He says to me, Estas nalgas ya no son mías; no
quiero hacer más [‘This butt is no longer a part
of me; I don’t want to do any more’].
Interviewer Lucy Vigil remembers another memo-
rable interruption of one of those longer sessions with the
feisty nonagenarian of interview 219:
(3-1) Perhaps my most interesting interview was
with Agueda Martínez, a famous weaver
from Medanales, New Mexico, whose work is
displayed at the Smithsonian Institution. She
was ninety-six years old when I interviewed
her in her home in Medanales, where I was able
to observe her bailando en el telar ‘dancing
on the loom,’ a phrase she used to describe
her weaving activity. After several hours
[of the interview, she] indicated that I had
overstayed my welcome. I thought that I had
tired this little old lady and I apologized for
my insensitivity and said that perhaps I could
return tomorrow, after she had rested. She
retorted that I had not tired her but rather that
I was keeping her from earning a livelihood, as
she was accustomed to working on the loom a
certain number of hours per day and this day
The New Mexico-Colorado Spanish Survey
her schedule had been interrupted. . . . I often
remember this remarkable lady . . . who was
still paying her own way in the world. “Danc­
ing on the loom” looked like hard work to me.
Data Analysis and Mapping
The information reported in this book is limited almost
exclusively to the specifically elicited data. We focus largely
on lexical (word) variables, but we also periodically mention
grammatical and phonological phenomena as well. With
regard to the kind of linguistic variation, although we deal
occasionally with social variation, particularly in part 4,
our major concern is geographical variation.
For the purposes of this linguistic atlas, the data
collected through the interviews have been entered into
two databases, one for biographical information and the
other for the responses to the specifically elicited items on
the questionnaire. The biographical database includes for
each consultant the personal information (name, address,
age, etc.), biographical details (education, parents’ birth-
places, etc.), assessments of language use and proficiency,
interviewer’s observations regarding the interview setting,
and of course the locality represented (including lati-
tude and longitude coordinates). The response database
contains the item key word (which is usually the English
gloss for the item), each Spanish response offered, and
whether that response was the person’s first choice or one
of three alternatives (“coequal choice,” mentioned after the
first choice but considered to be used equally often; “second
choice,” considered less used than the first choice; or a form
reported to be “used by others” but not by the consultant).
Information from these two databases is exported
(a) to the MapInfo software program for generation of all
maps presented here and (b) to the SPSS software program
for production of all tables and statistical analyses. As
noted previously, all maps and tables presented here are
based exclusively on the consultants’ first choice responses
unless we specify differently for a particular display.
27
 Chap ter 4
Historical Overview of the
Spanish Language and
Culture in New Mexico
• New Mexico was first exposed to the Spanish
language and culture just thirty-six years after
Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas. In
1528, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his shipwrecked
companions arrived on the coast of Texas. He wandered
through the area that is now the southwestern United
States for seven years, finally managing to reenter
Spanish-speaking territory on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
The fascinating tales he told upon reaching Mexico City
stimulated interest in those remote northern lands and
led to the explorations of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado,
beginning in 1540. Other Spanish expeditions, both legal
and illegal, were carried out in the 1580s and 1590s. These
transient activities, however, left few traces.
It was only at the end of the sixteenth century that
Spanish language and culture gained a permanent foot-
hold in the northern territory. A small band of colonists,
soldiers, and priests numbering perhaps five hundred
persons (Simmons 1991, 96–97) under the command of
Juan de Oñate set out in January of 1598 from near Santa
Bárbara, the northernmost settlement in Nueva España
‘New Spain,’ the colonial period name for Mexico. After
an arduous journey of six months covering seven hundred
miles, they arrived at a Pueblo Indian community in
northern New Mexico that they immediately christened
San Juan (a name the pueblo endured until September of
2005 when the tribal council officially restored its tradi-
tional original name, Ohkay Owingeh). Here they estab-
lished the first permanent European settlement anywhere
in territory that would eventually become a state of the
United States.
As the discussion of myth 2 in chapter 2 emphasizes,
it is important to recognize that while these first settlers
were subjects of the Spanish Crown and some degree of
Spanish blood flowed in their veins, they brought to New
Mexico a Spanish language and culture already modified
by a century of “Americanization” (in the hemispheric
sense, not in the restricted United States sense) and a
couple of generations of “Mexicanization.” Although
settlers from Spain were continually arriving in the New
World, by the end of the sixteenth century, a new variety
of Spanish had developed:
(4-1) Se puede constatar durante los primeros 50 años
de presencia española en México un proceso de
nivelación y simplificación de la lengua en aras
29
 de una efectiva comunicación por parte de la
comunidad pluridialectal representada por los
diferentes grupos de inmigrantes españoles y
por la participación de los grupos amerindios
bilingües. (Acevedo 2000, 34–35) ‘It can be
established that during the first fifty years of
the Spanish presence in Mexico there was a
process of leveling and simplification in the
interest of effective communication on the
part of the multidialectal community
represented by distinct groups of Spanish
immigrants and the participation of bilingual
Native American groups.’
Many of the first colonists in New Mexico, including
Oñate himself (Simmons 1991, 32), were born in the New
World. It is misleading to use the label “Spaniards” to
refer to these bearers of a hybrid culture and language
enriched by American experiences and the Native
American cultures of the Caribbean and Mexico. We use
the term Hispanics instead.
Although the area encompassing Mexico was called
“New Spain” (Nueva España), the newly established
northern colony was in fact referred to as “New Mexico”
(el Nuevo México, or sometimes la Nueva México, as
in Villagrá’s epic poem of 1610 describing the founding
of the colony; see, for example the bilingual edition by
Encinias, Rodríguez, and Sánchez (1992). Diego de Vargas,
the man who led the Hispanics back into the province in
1693, called the colony “remote beyond compare,” a char-
acterization memorably preserved in the title of the first
volume of the Vargas Project (Kessell 1989). Indeed it was.
At its founding, the colony was fully 750 miles from any
other Spanish-speaking town in Mexico. It was one of
the most isolated settlements in the vast Spanish Empire.
“Commerce and communication with New Spain, during
the seventeenth century, depended entirely on the cara-
vans which at no less than three year intervals, brought
supplies to the mission from Mexico City, along the 1500
mile Camino Real, to Santa Fe” (Weber 1967, 126).
First as a distant outpost on the extreme northern edge
of the Spanish Empire, later as an outlying part of indepen-
dent Mexico, and ultimately as a possession of the United
States, the New Mexico and southern Colorado region has
experienced for four centuries a degree of insularity from
the main currents of Hispanicity that is unmatched in the
Americas. Although the colony was but an extension of
colonial Mexico in its early formation, this detachment
contributed to the formation of a unique Hispanic culture
and dialect, which we call Traditional Spanish.
30
There were, of course, regular arrivals from Mexico.
For most of New Mexico’s history, however, contact with
Mexico was sufficiently restricted that newly arriving
settlers tended to adapt to the frontier dialect and way
of life of the majority who had already established them-
selves in the region. The principal exception to this adap-
tation has occurred with the heavy Mexican immigration
of the twentieth century, one of the forces that is leading
the long-marginalized New Mexican dialect back into the
mainstream of Mexican Spanish.
The uniqueness of the Traditional Spanish spoken
in New Mexico and southern Colorado has stimulated a
robust history of linguistic study. E. C. Hills published his
“New Mexican Spanish” article at the beginning of the
twentieth century (1906, reprinted in his 1929 collected
works). Shortly thereafter came the published versions of
the doctoral dissertation research of native son Aurelio
Macedonio Espinosa (1909, 1911–13, 1914–15), with subse-
quent highly influential translations into Spanish (1930,
1946) that led respected Hispanist Amado Alonso, in his
preface to the 1946 edition (vi), to describe New Mexican
Spanish as “la variedad regional del español más minu-
ciosamente estudiada” (‘the most meticulously studied
regional variety of Spanish’). Meticulous research on this
variety was continued in later excellent studies such as
those of Rael 1937, Bowen 1952, Ross 1975, and Jaramillo
1986, among many, many others. (For a comprehen-
sive listing and assessment of works on New Mexican
Spanish and other varieties of U.S. Spanish prior to 1975,
see Teschner, Bills, and Craddock 1975).
Because the unique nature of New Mexican Spanish
has become so well known, it is also widely believed to be a
homogeneous dialect of Spanish. Even that superb scholar
Espinosa reported back in 1909: “Within the territory
covered by our study [that is, New Mexico north of Socorro
and the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado] the language
is fairly uniform, the differences being few, and as a rule
unimportant” (53). A century later, Rubén Cobos notes
that “New Mexico and southern Colorado Spanish [is]
quite uniform over the whole geographical area” (2003, ix).
But note the appropriate hedging in these quotes: “fairly,”
“few,” “as a rule,” “quite.” As we document throughout this
book, the dialect variation that occurs within our area of
study is far greater than is generally supposed.
The history of a language reflects the historical expe-
riences of its speakers, especially with regard to its vocab-
ulary. The distinctiveness and variability of New Mexican
Spanish are attributable primarily to four character-
istics associated with the history of its speakers: (1) the
retention of archaisms, (2) independent developments,
chapter four
(3) the influence of English, and (4) contact with Mexican
Spanish and standard Spanish. New Mexican Spanish has
linguistic features that reflect the original Spanish brought
into the region. Most of these features continue in the
language worldwide. Some are now characteristic only of
rustic or untutored speech. Other features reflect the early
need to adapt to New World circumstances that were radi-
cally different from European culture and experiences.
Moreover, restricted opportunities for interchange with
the rest of the Spanish-speaking world naturally favored
the rise of independent linguistic developments. Close
contact with English since the mid-nineteenth century
has contributed further to both innovation and variability
in the language. Finally, twentieth-century immigration
from Mexico has had a profound impact that is determin-
ing the future direction of New Mexican Spanish.
The historical evolution is mirrored beautifully in the
9 different words the NMCOSS consultants used to label
the concept ‘Turkey’: gallina de la tierra, ganso, torque,
guajolote, guajalote, cócono, cócano, güíjalo, and pavo. The
turkey is a New World bird for which a Spanish label had
to be developed, and the solutions to the problem vary
widely. For example, of the 9 NMCOSS variants, only
pavo appears among the 5 words for ‘Turkey’ encountered
in the Atlas lingüístico-etnográfico de Colombia (ALEC)
(vol. 2, mapa 118). In this overview chapter, we will exam-
ine the 9 NMCOSS words for ‘Turkey’ as the principal
exemplification of the four historical characteristics
previously stated. (We provide a more detailed treatment
of the ‘Turkey’ lexicon in Vigil and Bills 2004b.)
We make frequent reference in this discussion to
three other works. Foremost is the survey of words for
‘Turkey’ in New Mexican Spanish by Lawrence Kiddle,
which is based on data from 172 speakers (164 from New
Mexico and 8 from just across the border in Mexico).
These data were collected between 1936 and 1938 but
not published until 1951–52 (although a preliminary
report was published ten years earlier as Kiddle 1941). He
discusses the etymology and use of each variant and plots
their distribution in the 1930s on two maps in the 1951–52
publication that is the source for all discussion here.
Second, a monumental research effort that we will
be drawing on throughout this book is the Atlas lingüís-
tico de México, or ALM (Lope Blanch et al. 1990–2000).
The data for this atlas were collected primarily during
the 1970s from 610 persons interviewed in 193 commu-
nities across Mexico. The data are displayed without
summary information or interpretation on 952 maps
of large size (sixteen by twenty-four inches). Each map
simply plots every response for a given variable using a
Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico
different symbol for each variant. Neither interpretive
comments nor summary statistics are provided, making
it somewhat difficult for the atlas user to assess relative
frequencies of the variants. We drew heavily from the
ALM Cuestionario (Lope Blanch 1970a) in designing the
NMCOSS questionnaire, so there are many points for
comparison. Mapa 643 of the ALM displays the distribu-
tions of the 47 different variants for ‘Turkey’ encountered
in Mexico, though these variants appear to correspond to
only 9 or so distinct words of importance.
Finally, of more limited value but providing a some-
what broader Southwest perspective, two recent books
by Manuel Alvar (2000) and Amalia Pedrero González
(2002) report on data collected for 25 “Southwest” com-
munities by Manuel Alvar beginning in 1987 for the
massive Atlas Lingüístico de Hispanoamérica (see Alvar
1991a, 1991b, Alvar and Quilis 1984). Those data come
from a total of 52 informants: 23 from New Mexico,
4 from Colorado, 5 from Arizona, 19 from Texas, and
1 from Louisiana (Alvar 2000, 127–31). Alvar provides the
responses in phonetic transcription for 798 variables; item
361 deals with ‘Turkey’ (283). Pedrero (2002) analyzes and
discusses the responses for 400 variables (for ‘Turkey’ see
329–31). Regrettably, neither provides numerical details.
Alvar simply lists the variants used in each community
and Pedrero reports the variants only as overall percent-
ages across the five states. Determining exact numbers
for a given variant is made difficult or impossible since
not all informants provided responses to every item and
some provided multiple responses (e.g., it seems that there
must have been 61 responses for ‘Turkey’). Moreover, the
two studies do not always list exactly the same variants.
In spite of their many flaws, these works are valuable
contributions, especially in showing that the Spanish of
the NMCOSS region is often very different from that of
the other three states, and we will regularly refer to these
works throughout this book.
Retentions
With the founding of the New Mexico colony, the limits
of Spanish occupation were extended hundreds of miles
northward through a harsh region that had no roads and
limited sources of water and whose Native American
inhabitants had not yet yielded to the Spanish Crown’s
territorial ambitions. The colony was located far from the
Spanish power base in Mexico City and communication
required a long and arduous journey of many months.
Indeed, the closest Spanish-speaking village was over
seven hundred miles away, the town of Santa Bárbara
31
on the southern edge of the state of Chihuahua, a town
that had been established only thirty years earlier, in 1567
(Hammond and Rey 1966, 4).
New Mexico was a distant and isolated outpost, and
isolation always has linguistic consequences. Many forms
characteristic of sixteenth-century Spanish remained
entrenched in Traditional Spanish through the centuries
while mainstream Spanish went veering off to altered
meanings, altered forms, alternative forms, or entirely
new words. Such retentions are generally called archa-
isms and typically defined as usages that are obsolete, at
least with respect to the standard language. For example,
Buesa and Enguita (1992, 215) define archaisms in mean-
ing as términos que no se han perdido en el español medio
peninsular, aunque han abandonado su sentido antiguo
que, sin embargo, ha perdurado en América (‘terms that
haven’t been lost in the Spanish of the central [Iberian]
peninsula, although they have lost the older meaning that
has nevertheless endured in America’).
Isolation in that remote location for a couple of centu-
ries, apart from mainstream changes elsewhere, helps
explain the existence of many archaisms in Traditional
Spanish today. Forms such as cuasi ‘almost’ (standard
casi), mesmo ‘same, self’ (standard mismo), trujieron ‘they
brought’ (standard trajeron), and vido ‘he saw’ (standard
vio) were described as archaic for Traditional Spanish by
Aurelio Espinosa (1911, 9) a hundred years ago and are
still the norm for the dialect. These forms were routine
in early Spanish literary works such as the fourteenth-
century Cantar de mio Cid (e.g., the edition of Marcos
Marín 1997), the fifteenth-century La Celestina (Rojas
1960), and the sixteenth-century Lazarillo de Tormes (e.g.,
the edition of Cejador y Frauca 1969).
We may also consider as archaisms other now-obso-
lete forms that are not retentions from older peninsular
Spanish but rather were first created to deal with previously
unknown New World phenomena. One such novel entity
for Europeans was the turkey. How do you come up with
a label for a new thing? A commonplace way is to create
a new form using existing resources of the language, for
example, by combining two words to carry a new mean-
ing, a process known as compounding. Whereas English
tends to coin new words by compounding two words side
by side (wheelchair, washing machine), the usual procedure
in Spanish is to create phrasal compounds with the prepo-
sition de (silla de ruedas ‘chair of/with wheels,’ máquina de
lavar ‘machine of/for washing’). Turkeys were commonly
domesticated by the Native Americans. The comparable
domesticated bird in European experience was the gallina
‘chicken.’ So just as a wheelchair was considered a special
32
kind of chair, this new bird was perceived as a special kind
of chicken, a New World chicken, or as the Spanish were
wont to say for American novelties, de la tierra ‘of the land.’
Thus, the compound form gallina de la tierra (‘chicken of
the land’) was created to refer to a turkey. Whenever it
became necessary to clarify the distinction between the
two fowl, the phrase de Castilla ‘of Spain’ could be added
to gallina. Thus the turkey was labeled gallina de la tierra,
and gallina de Castilla could refer unambiguously to
‘chicken.’ (Alvar 1990, 27–28 describes a number of such
early uses in his study of Americanisms in a sixteenth-
century manuscript.)
The phrasal form was clearly prominent in Mexico
for several hundred years. Peter Boyd-Bowman docu-
ments gallina de la tierra (as well as related forms such as
gallo de la tierra ‘New World rooster’ and gallo de papada
‘wattled rooster’) as the dominant turkey label for Mexico
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1987, 1983)
and as a label still in competition with the up-start guajo-
lote in the eighteenth century (1982). He does not docu-
ment it at all in the nineteenth century (1984). Francisco
Santamaría includes both gallina de la tierra and gallo de
la tierra in his Diccionario de mejicanismos (1959), but he
was recording past, not current, use of these labels. They
do not appear in Ramos y Duarte’s 1895 Diccionario de
mejicanismos, and they are not recorded among the forty-
seven distinct variants for ‘Turkey’ in the Atlas lingüístico
de México. It appears, therefore, that this priceless lexical
item has disappeared from Mexican Spanish or at best
has become vanishingly rare.
For New Mexico, gallina de la tierra is evident from
the earliest records. Kiddle (192–93) gives a number of
examples of this term for the Native Americans’ domesti-
cated turkey in documents of the sixteenth-century expe-
ditions of Coronado, Rodríguez and Chamuscado, and
Espejo, as well as in colonial writings of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The 1602 testimony of soldiers
of Juan de Oñate’s New Mexico colony made frequent
reference to this native bird and consistently used the
gallina form, with or without the de la tierra delimitation
(Craddock 2002, 90–91):
(4-3) crian gallinas de la tierra, de las quales no se
aprobechan porque las crian para valerse de la
pluma para hazer mantas ‘they raise turkeys,
which they don’t take full advantage of because
they raise them to make use of their feathers to
make blankets.’ (our translation)
A plains Indian brought down to Mexico City for the same
chapter four
 Table 4-1. Responses for ‘Turkey’ in Kiddle and NMCOSS
Kiddle NMCOSS
% (n) % (n)
gallina de la tierra 22.7 (39) 2.4 (8)
gallina de la sierra 3.5 (6) 0.0 (0)
ganso 16.3 (28) 25.0 (85)
guajolote 5.2 (9) 10.0 (34)
guajalote 0.0 (0) 2.9 (10)
cócono 10.5 (18) 14.7 (50)
cócano 17.4 (30) 10.9 (37)
güíjolo 5.2 (9) 0.0 (0)
güíjalo 0.0 (0) 1.8 (6)
torque (terque, turca, turkey) 11.0 (19) 23.8 (81)
pavo (pavón) 8.1 (14) 7.6 (26)
Other (cocodrila, guájalo, güíjalote) 0.0 (0) 0.9 (3)
N (172) (340)

interrogation was questioned by means of signs about the
two kinds of gallina (115–16):
(4-4) Mostraronsele gallinas de Castilla y rrespondio
que no las ay en su tierra. . . . Mostraronsele
gallinas de la tierra y dijo que las ay en su tierra
y en todas las partes que el andubo ‘He was
shown some chickens and he responded that
there aren’t any in his land. . . . He was shown
some turkeys and he said that there are some
in his land and everywhere he had traveled.’
(our translation)
Eighty years later, in 1682, reporting on the situa-
tion following the revolt of the Pueblo Indians, Antonio
de Otermín, governor and captain general of the New
Mexico province, shows that the phrasal descriptors de
Castilla and de la tierra continued to be used to distin-
guish between chickens and turkeys:
(4-5) el dicho Pueblo de la Alameda esta bien
abastecido de maíz y frixol y gallinas de la
tierra y en Puaray hay de Castilla ‘the aforesaid
Alameda Pueblo is well stocked with corn
and beans and turkeys and in Puaray there
are chickens.’ (Archivo General de Indias,
Audiencia de México n.d.; our translation,
which differs from the translation by Shelby
provided in Hackett 1942, 220)
Julyan (1998, 143) reports that the Geographic Names
Information Service gives 45 New Mexico place names
containing gallina, noting that “it usually refers to the
gallina de la tierra, the wild turkey.”
Table 4-1 shows the frequency of response for each of
the ‘Turkey’ words in the Kiddle and NMCOSS surveys.
We may note at this point that the final “Other” forms
are obvious mispronunciations, offered by youngish
(ages twenty-three, forty-nine, and thirty-five, respec-
tively) natives of urban areas (Albuquerque, Las Cruces,
and Truth or Consequences, respectively). It’s also rele-
vant to note that all 341 of the NMCOSS consultants who
were asked to identify this photograph of several live
turkeys provided at least 1 response. As is usually the case
throughout this book, only the individual’s preferred or
first-mentioned label is represented in this table.
As table 4-1 indicates, Kiddle documents that the term
gallina de la tierra continued to thrive in New Mexico in
the 1930s. He also reports several cases of a derived form,
gallina de la sierra (‘chicken of the mountain’), appar-
ently a folk etymology that developed independently in
New Mexico. The 2 gallina forms together represent the

Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico 33

most common term in the 1930s, over one-fourth (26%)
of his responses. But the decline in use over sixty years is
dramatic, with gallina de la tierra accounting for only 2%
of the NMCOSS responses. The gallinas are not coming
home to roost. Rather, they seem to be trotting off along
the same path to extinction as they already did in Mexico.
Our survey has found no cases of gallina de la sierra (not
even as an alternative form). Moreover, of the 10 consul-
tants who offered gallina de la tierra (8 first choice plus 2
other mentions), all were advanced in age (only 1 younger
than seventy-five) and all but 1 represent very rural areas.
The only 2 cases reported by Pedrero (2002) and Alvar
(2000) were also from rural New Mexico—and probably
elderly since almost three-fourths of the participants in
that survey were over sixty years of age (xix).
Map 4-1 shows the geographical distribution of the
gallina forms in the Kiddle survey of the 1930s and in
the NMCOSS sixty years later. A striking feature of this
display is the clustering of these forms in the northern
three-quarters of the region. Such patterning led Kiddle
to place on his maps a dialect boundary (or isogloss)
separating the state into a small southern dialect area
and a larger northern dialect area, an early recogni-
tion (along with Ornstein 1951) of what we here refer to
as Border Spanish and Traditional Spanish, as demon-
strated earlier with map 1-2. We display this isogloss on
the map, as Kiddle did, at about the latitude of 33.5 degrees
north. Several maps that follow demonstrate the validity
of this major dialect division for the 1930s as well as for
the 1990s.
The quasi-archaism gallina de la tierra, then, is a
distinguishing feature of Traditional Spanish. However,
it now finds itself on its last legs, not just endangered,
but moribund. Its demise is but one glimpse of what the
future holds for this special dialect.
Independent Developments
Linguistic seclusion from the rest of the Spanish-speaking
world favored not only the maintenance of archaisms. It
also contributed to the development and retention of inno-
vative changes. As one example, while the general word
for ‘Bat’ in Spanish is murciélago, the preferred term in
Traditional Spanish is the descriptive compound ratón
volador, literally ‘flying mouse.’ We have not found this
innovation in any dictionary other than those dealing with
the dialect of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado
(e.g., Cobos 1983, 2003; L. Trujillo 1983). Even more tell-
ing is the fact that this term for the flying mammal is not
recorded among the variants documented in mapa 618 of
34
the Atlas lingüístico de México. It appears to be an indepen-
dent development in New Mexican Spanish.
We saw in the preceding section that one way to create
a name for a new phenomenon is to make a compound with
existing words. Another way is to extend the meaning of an
existing word, as in my present use of a “mouse” to “save”
this computer “file” now and to “open” it later. In addition
to chicken, a domesticated fowl more comparable in size to
the turkey is a goose, ganso in most of the Spanish-speaking
world. The extension of the meaning of ganso to cover
‘Turkey’ seems to be a uniquely New Mexican phenom-
enon. Kiddle is content to consider its origin as simply
“unknown” (194). There would appear, however, to be two
plausible speculations. First, it might have been a seman-
tic extension utilized by the earliest Spaniards in the New
World, a proposal that we have made, perhaps too hastily,
elsewhere (e.g., Vigil et al. 1996, 654). Nevertheless, Boyd-
Bowman (1982, 1983, 1984, 1987) fails to document this form
except in instances where it would seem to have the stan-
dard reference of ‘goose,’ and we have found no other early
references to such a form. The second possibility is that the
semantic extension took place only later, in New Mexico,
and that the form is not in fact an archaism but rather an
independent development.
Whatever the historical explanation, ganso for
‘Turkey’ came to be a major characteristic of New Mexi­
can Spanish in the twentieth century. This term occupies
the third position among alternates in the 1930s, repre-
senting 16% of Kiddle’s responses. But unlike gallina de la
tierra, this other unique label based on existing Spanish
resources abounds in the 1990s as the most frequently
occurring NMCOSS variant at 25%. Its expansion is all the
more surprising since the term of preference for ‘Goose’
among the NMCOSS consultants is also ganso. However,
only 11 persons in our survey gave ganso as their preferred
form for both ‘Goose’ and ‘Turkey.’ Others use ánsara for
‘Goose,’ but these are not always the same persons who
use ganso for ‘Turkey.’
In Kiddle’s survey, ganso was distributed across New
Mexico and was not a north-south dialect distinguisher,
but it has certainly become so today. As we see on map
4-2, not only has this form retreated toward the north, it
has become tightly concentrated in the northeastern part
of New Mexico and adjacent southern Colorado. All 4
persons that Lope Blanch interviewed in Mora County in
the southern part of this region reported the use of ganso
(1990a, 78). Similarly, Alvar (2000) and Pedrero (2002) find
that all 6 occurrences of ganso in the Atlas lingüístico de
Hispanoamérica survey come from the northern one-third
of New Mexico.
chapter four
 4-1. ‘Turkey’ – gallina

Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico 35

4-2. ‘Turkey’ – ganso

36 chapter four
 English Influence
Although the ties to the homeland, whether Spain or
Mexico, were always loose because of distances, the inva-
sion of New Mexico in 1846 by U.S. troops under General
Stephen Watts Kearny’s command and the subsequent
incorporation of the territory into the United States in
1848 further reduced contact with the rest of the Spanish-
speaking world. It also opened up a new storehouse of
lexical supplies. At least as convenient as compounding
or semantic extension to create a new word is simply to
“borrow” the label employed by another language. Such
new words are called borrowings or loanwords. (These
kinds of words are not really “borrowed” or “lent” since
they also remain with the source language; the term
“clones” might be a better description of the process, but
the older terms are firmly established in linguistics).
The effect of borrowings from English, called
Anglicisms, on the local Spanish lexicon was swift and
profound. The establishment of United States author-
ity was followed by the wholesale adoption of English
terminology for a new political and social reality. For
most speakers of New Mexican Spanish today, the law
enforcement officer for the county is the cherife ‘Sheriff,’
and the chief administrator of the town or city is the
mayor ‘Mayor,’ both of whom often work in the casa de
corte ‘Courthouse’; Espinosa documents all three of these
Anglicisms already at the beginning of the twentieth
century (1914–15, 310, 253, and 252, respectively).
Also, the New Mexico territory became a part of the
United States just as the industrial revolution was gain-
ing momentum and agrarian New Mexico was effec-
tively severed from its Spanish source for acquiring new
lexical items. English naturally became the source for
most terms of modern technologies. Thus, such inno-
vations as the ‘Brakes’ on an automobile became brecas
(Espinosa 1914–15, 245), ‘trucks’ became trocas (311), and
the ‘Telephone’ became telefón.
The impact of English increased in the twentieth
century, particularly after New Mexico gained statehood
in 1912. Universal education in English was established,
resulting in commonplace Anglicisms such as princi-
pal ‘school principal’ and escuela alta ‘high school.’ The
process of Anglicization continued apace as Hispanics
became an ethnic minority in mid-century and the rapid
urbanization that began following World War II resulted
in major demographic changes.
Even long-established words were susceptible to
the English infection: even turkey. The borrowing from
English is normally realized as torque, though Kiddle
records 1 case each of terque and turca. With a total of
Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico
65 first choices, torque was also the usual form of the
Anglicism in the NMCOSS as well, but 2 other vari-
ants occurred: 9 instances of terque and 7 instances of
the English word turkey pronounced without integra-
tion into the Spanish phonological system, phoneti-
cally [t h  kiy]. Curiously, Alvar (2000) transcribes the
Anglicisms he encountered (from apparently 2 speak-
ers, from Albuquerque) as [túrki], which Pedrero (2002)
writes as turqui and turky, a spelling-based pronunciation
that we have never encountered.
This Anglicism was already well established in New
Mexico when Kiddle carried out his survey in the 1930s.
At that time, just ninety years after New Mexico became
a territory of the United States and just twenty-five years
after finally gaining statehood, 11% of those surveyed used
an Anglicism to refer to this bird (table 4-1). Sixty years
later, the fully integrated variant torque had become the
second most common variant in the NMCOSS, at 19%.
When the other 2 variants (terque and turkey) are added
in, the percentage of the Anglicism rises to 24%.
Map 4-3 for torque (which excludes the English turkey)
shows that the Anglicism is most definitely a characteris-
tic of Traditional Spanish. Kiddle reports no instances of
torque below the latitude 33.5 north, and the NMCOSS has
found just 2 cases below that line, but both on the northern
edge of that Border Spanish region, 1 of them torque and 1
of the alternative form terque.
It is probably not too surprising that not a single
instance of the Anglicism is cited in the Atlas lingüístico
de México. Pedrero (2002) and Alvar (2000) report the 2
instances for New Mexico and none for elsewhere in the
Southwest.
Popular Mexican Spanish Influence
The Spanish of Mexico has been the single most powerful
force in the linguistic history of New Mexico and south-
ern Colorado, despite their four centuries as one of the
most isolated bastions of the Spanish-speaking world.
Traditional Spanish was born of Mexican Spanish. The
Spanish language had already been passed across three
generations in Mexico, and it was that Spanish that was
brought up to the new territory. Juan de Oñate, who led
the original settlers into New Mexico, was born and
raised in Zacatecas, and it is likely that the great majority
of those who accompanied him were natives of Mexico.
After the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, Diego de Vargas led the
Reconquest that resettled the Province of New Mexico in
1693. Many of those who returned with Vargas were the
remnants of the former colony, and virtually all of these
37
4-3. ‘Turkey’ – torque

38 chapter four
of course had been born in New Mexico or in exile in El
Paso. In addition, he brought in perhaps a thousand new
settlers recruited from Mexico City, Zacatecas, and other
parts of Mexico. A list naming nearly two hundred indi-
viduals in fifty-six families recruited in Mexico City is
provided in Kessell, Hendricks, and Dodge (1995, 257–91,
and also in Twitchell 1914, 92–105). The birthplaces of
most of these new recruits are designated. They were
overwhelmingly Mexican natives, mostly born in Mexico
City; perhaps only as many as 5% were natives of Spain
(see Kessell, Hendricks, and Dodge 1995, 10).
The first century of the New Mexico colony was
characterized by very limited communications with
Mexico and only modest infusions of new settlers until
the Reconquest, but the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries were a period of gradually expanding contact
with interior New Spain, bringing new colonists into
New Mexico and other territories of the Southwest.
Communication was by no means easy, however. Vargas
had advised the settlers recruited in 1693 that they would
face a “long journey, which was expected to last four
months” (Kessell, Hendricks, and Dodge 1995, 5). Trade
and communication increased in the first decade of the
eighteenth century when the town of Chihuahua was
established in northern Mexico along the Camino Real
(the Spanish Crown’s “royal road” that began in Mexico
City, ran through Chihuahua and El Paso, and paralleled
the Río Grande to end in Santa Fe). By the middle of the
century, Chihuahua had become the major trading hub
for goods to and from New Mexico. Even then, however,
trading ventures between Mexico and northern New
Mexico, where the majority of the Hispanic population
lived, was counted in months instead of days.
The linguistic consequences of the continuous
contact with the independently changing Mexican
Spanish is the propagation of such typically Mexican
forms as papalote for ‘Kite,’ cuates for ‘Twins,’ cacahuate
for ‘Peanut,’ chicote for ‘Riding crop, whip,’ and chupar-
rosa for ‘Hummingbird.’ Such Mexicanisms, some arriv-
ing in the first century of the New Mexico colony, some
only later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
are so widespread and prominent in the Spanish of New
Mexico and southern Colorado today that they are also a
defining quality of this dialect.
But a still stronger impact of Mexican Spanish
began to be felt in the twentieth century, when Mexican
immigration to the United States began to accelerate
significantly, especially in the latter half of the century.
Certain features characteristic of the popular speech of
modern Mexico prevail mostly in the southern part of
Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico
New Mexico where the United States shares a border with
Mexico and in other areas where immigrants have been
most likely to find employment. The spatial constraints
on this most recent Mexican influence are the basis for
our distinguishing the two major dialects we label Border
Spanish and Traditional Spanish.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of
Mexican Spanish is the abundance of words borrowed
from the Indian languages of Mexico. Prominent among
these “word lenders” were the Aztecs, the advanced civi-
lization that Cortés encountered upon reaching high-
land Mexico in 1519. The language of the Aztecs is called
Nahuatl, a language that is still widely spoken in central
Mexico today. Borrowings from that language are called
Nahuatlisms (often called aztequismos in Spanish). The
prominence of Nahuatlisms is a particularly clear demon-
stration of the role of Mexico in the establishment and
continued development of New Mexican Spanish. Several
of the words for ‘Turkey’ illustrate this legacy.
The apparently first and quite early borrowing of a
Native American word for ‘Turkey’ is guajolote, adapted
from the Nahuatl huehxolo-tl. Kiddle considers the form
to have “spread in the late colonial period from a focal area
in Central Mexico where Nahuatl was commonly spoken”
(197). The study of four centuries of Mexican Spanish by
Peter Boyd-Bowman (1982, 1983, 1984, 1987) seems to
support this conclusion, suggesting that guajolote did not
become common in written documents in Mexico until the
eighteenth century. Its use in the spoken language, however,
must have been initiated earlier. We find an apparent refer-
ence already in 1582 in the diary of a soldier named Diego
Pérez de Luxán, who served in the expedition of Antonio
de Espejo to New Mexico. One of the pueblos the expedi-
tion visited was given the name Los Guajolotes presumably
because of its many turkeys. Luxán reports:
(4-6) En el hallamos munchas gallinas y
bastimento y tiene toda esta nacion munchas
mascaras con que hacen sus danzas y bailes.
Y llamamosle el paraxe de los guajolotes.
‘Here we found many turkeys and abundant
provisions. Throughout this nation the
people have many masks which they use in
their dances and ceremonies. We named
this place Los Guajolotes.’ (Archivo General
de Indias, Patronato n.d.; translation of
Hammond and Rey 1966, 177)
This citation with fully integrated Spanish spelling
appears to give evidence for the very early incorporation
39
of this Nahuatl loanword even if it was still not widely
used in Mexico.
By the end of the nineteenth century, however,
Ramos y Duarte (1895) characterizes it as general across
the Republic of Mexico. For the twentieth century, Lope
Blanch finds the term to be among the 74 Native American
loanwords (almost entirely Nahuatlisms) that in Mexico
City are ubiquitous, de conocimiento absolutamente general
(1979, 35). The Atlas lingüístico de México clearly confirms
this status; mapa 643 shows guajolote to be the most
common label in all sectors of the country except in the
Yucatán Peninsula, where the standard pavo prevails.
But in New Mexico, Kiddle’s investigation in the
1930s found guajolote to be one of the least frequently
occurring variants, at just 5% (or just 4% if we exclude the
2 cases from across the border in Mexico). Still, it was 1 of
the principal competing forms in the south, representing
almost a quarter of the southern tokens. As shown in map
4-4, he encountered this form only in the southern part
of the state, a defining term for his north-south distinc-
tion. These findings suggest that the quickly spread-
ing Mexican Nahuatlism had made a still fairly recent
entrance into the NMCOSS region.
Sixty years later this Nahuatlism had spread broadly
across New Mexico and southern Colorado and appeared
in 2 forms, usually with /o/ in the second syllable, guajo-
lote, less commonly with /a/ in the second syllable,
guajalote. (Although the Mexico atlas does not report the
second variant and neither does Kiddle, Boyd-Bowman
(1984) provides information that it occurs in nineteenth-
century Mexican documents.) The 2 variants together
account for 13% of the NMCOSS cases, tripling its propor-
tion in sixty years and making it appear to be a competi-
tive player in the current lexical game in the territory of
our study. But while map 4-4 shows that it has expanded
quite impressively into the north, its proportion of the
lexical market in the south has actually declined.
We may surmise that guajolote came into south-
ern New Mexico in the nineteenth century and that its
further spread is attributable to the increasing influence
of Mexican Spanish via immigration in the twentieth
century. This assumption is supported by the distribu-
tion of the NMCOSS responses in map 4-4. The bulk of the
guajolote forms occur either in the southern sector or on
the eastern and western margins of the north, the princi-
pal areas of Mexican immigration in the twentieth century.
Other southwestern states have had much heavier immi-
gration from Mexico, which no doubt accounts for the fact
that guajolote tallies fully 62% of the responses in Pedrero’s
broader study (2002) that includes Texas and Arizona.
40
One reason for the lower showing of guajolote/
guajalote in New Mexico may be a lexical conflict pointed
out by Kiddle (197). The shift in form of another word has
resulted in a clashing meaning for the same form. ‘Water
salamander’ in Mexico is ajolote (yet another Nahuatl
borrowing), but in the NMCOSS this label was the first
choice of only 6 persons. The overwhelmingly preferred
label for this reptile is guajolote or guajalote (the 2 variants
occurring in equal measure). So, is guajolote/guajalote a
bird or a lizard? The semantic conflict might well impede
the spread of this form from Mexico. A minor bit of support
for this supposition rests in the facts of usage: of those for
whom ‘Turkey’ is ganso, for example, 6 out of 10 (61%) report
guajolote/guajalote for ‘Water salamander’; contrariwise, of
those for whom ‘Turkey’ is guajolote/guajalote, only 38%
use that same form for ‘Water salamander.’
A yet clearer reason for the relatively low productiv-
ity of guajolote in New Mexican Spanish is the competi-
tion from an even stronger import from Mexico, cócono.
Although it is generally considered to be another borrow-
ing from Nahuatl, the Spanish history of the form cócono
for turkey remains a bit mysterious. Santamaría (1959) and
others (see Kiddle 194) suggest that this term was used for
a turkey chick and derives from the Nahuatl plural form
coconeh of the word for ‘child (used by females),’ cone-tl.
This etymology seems to us to be a bit far-fetched. Siméon
(1977) does note that in Nahuatl this word can be added to
animal names to form the diminutive. But why should the
plural form of a noun functioning as a generalized suffix
be borrowed to mean ‘Turkey’ with a change of the final
e to o? Loanwords from Nahuatl are generally transpar-
ently close to the original Nahuatl word in both form and
meaning. It may well be that cócono is a borrowing from
some other Mexican language, but until that alternative is
established, we’ll grudgingly accept the Nahuatl origin.
Not a single example of cócono occurs in Boyd-
Bowman’s Léxicos for the sixteenth to the nineteenth
centuries. The lack of documentation suggests that
the form developed and spread in Mexico as a regional
minority variant of little prestige, not used by those who
did much of the writing. The 1895 Diccionario de meji-
canismos by Ramos y Duarte reports cócono to be typical
of the states of Zacatecas and Aguascalientes. Guerrero
Romero (1996) lists the word as typical of the state of
Durango. To the west in the state of Sinaloa, Mendoza
Guerrero reports 6 cases of cócono (among 117 responses
for turkey) in three localities that have close ties with the
states of Durango and Chihuahua (2002, 82). Thanks to
the Atlas lingüístico de México, however, we now know
that cócono enjoys a much more conspicuous presence.
chapter four
 4-4. ‘Turkey’ – guajolote

Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico 41

 4-5. ‘Turkey’ in Mexico
Map 4-5, extrapolated from the data of mapa 643 of the
ALM, illustrates the geographical distribution in Mexico
of cócono (and another minority variant to be treated
next). This word occurs across a broad swath of the inte-
rior of central and northern Mexico from Colima and
Jalisco in the south to Chihuahua on the U.S. border
across from New Mexico and western Texas. Throughout
this area it competes quite strongly with guajolote.
All of the sources for Mexico agree that the word
is cócono, and while the Mexico atlas also documents
several related forms such as cúcono and cúcuno, it lists
none with /a/ in the second syllable. In New Mexico,
the different form cócano was already found to be wide-
spread in the 1930s. Indeed, the latter occurred almost
twice as commonly in the Kiddle survey, representing
17% of the total New Mexico cases for ‘Turkey,’ while the
/o/ variant cócono accounted for only 11% (or only 9%
if the Mexico cases are not included). Together, these 2
42
variants account for over a quarter of Kiddle’s cases and
share with the 2 gallina variants the distinction of being
the favored 1930s responses.
In our more recent survey, these 2 variants continue
their prominence, collectively ranking as the most widely
used way to refer to ‘Turkey’ and still comprising over
one-fourth of the responses. However, the proportions
have changed. Cócano has declined to just 11% while
cócono has increased to nearly 15%. Whatever the origins
of the /a/ variant, it appears that the spread of the /o/
variant is due to more recent immigration from north-
central Mexico, where it abounds. Alvar (2000) records
cócano for northern New Mexico and cócono for south-
ern Arizona (a total of 5 cases according to Pedrero’s 2002
statistics). It seems significant that those are the two states
adjacent to the cócono area of Mexico.
Consider now the New Mexican Spanish distribu-
tions of the cócono and cócano forms on map 4-6. Kiddle
chapter four
found that while both occurred across the region, the /o/
variant was more common in the southern region and
the /a/ variant in the northern region. The same situa-
tion holds true overall today. However, the /o/ form has
become the overwhelming label of choice in the south,
accounting for over half of the cases—and the 2 forms
together account for almost two-thirds (60%) of all the
responses below latitude 33.5.
North of that latitude, on the other hand, the 2 forms
together have become very much a minority lexical form.
There they accounted for over a fourth of the cases in the
1930s, but their proportion has been cut nearly in half,
now trailing torque and ganso in frequency. It is inter-
esting to observe on map 4-6 that both variants have
abandoned their once dominant position along the Río
Grande in the north, being now more prominent in rural
areas to the northwest, where Mexican immigration has
been stronger.
The final manifestation of the Mexican connection is
another Native American loanword, güíjolo. There have
been contradictory statements concerning its occurrence
in Mexico. Ramos y Duarte (1895) attributes güíjolo to the
southern state of Morelos. Kiddle found 2 instances of this
form in the El Paso–Juárez area and reports that it is also
heard “among rancheros of Chihuahua” (197). However,
the Atlas lingüístico de México appears to document (it
is not easy to count occurrences among the jumble of
symbols on those maps!) just 13 responses of güíjolo-
like forms, and it shows this label to be used mostly in
the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa (see map 4-5), and with
1 exception it is the minority form in the communities
sampled. These findings are strongly supported by the
more detailed dialect geography research that Mendoza
Guerrero carried out in Sinaloa. He finds guajolote
to be the dominant form, cited by 54 of his 60 consul-
tants, although güíjolo comes in a strong second with 35
mentions (2002, 80–82). The limited regional distribution
and minority status of güíjolo suggest that this variant is
dying out in Mexico.
The origin of this form is controversial. Kiddle (197),
Lope Blanch (1971, 22), and others have conjectured rather
vaguely that it too is a Nahuatlism. Mendoza Guerrero
(2002, 81), however, proposes a more convincing etymol-
ogy. He cites Lionnet’s documentation (1977, 85) of the
word wíjo-lo for ‘Turkey’ in the locally dominant Native
American language, Cahita (also known as Yaqui-Mayo,
which belongs to the same large Uto-Aztecan language
family as Nahuatl). The Cahita word is composed of a
verbal form wíjo-, meaning ‘shake, dust, fan,’ and a parti-
cle -lo used for animal names, which would appear to be a
Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico
transparent descriptive coinage native to Cahita. Mendoza
Guerrero decides that the Cahita form must have been
recently borrowed from Spanish, but we find the oppo-
site direction of transmission to be more reasonable. The
postulation that güijolo is a loanword from Cahita neatly
accounts for its present Mexican distribution centered
in Sinaloa, with some occurrence to the north in Sonora
and to the east in Chihuahua. Further, because Cahita
dialects were and are spoken from Sinaloa to Arizona,
the hypothesis suggests that the borrowing into Spanish
may have previously enjoyed a broader distribution that is
slowly receding. We return to this point later.
Güíjolo occurs in New Mexican Spanish, but again
with a second form, güíjalo. This third pair with an o/a
difference in an unstressed syllable is one of the least used
forms in both the 1930s and 1990s surveys. Kiddle acknowl-
edges the occurrence of the variant with /a/ in the second
syllable but does not map it separately. He reports only 7
cases of the 2 forms together, just 5%. The NMCOSS consul-
tants offered only 6 such responses, all güíjalo, accounting
for less than 2% of the cases. Furthermore, only 1 of these
persons was under sixty-seven years of age. It is clearly a
moribund form here, just as it seems to be in Mexico.
Kiddle also found the distribution of güíjolo to
strongly support dividing the state into two dialect
regions, because all of his cases occurred in the extreme
south. In the NMCOSS, however, that division fails to
hold. In fact, of the 6 first choices and 4 other mentions,
only half are in the south (although the 2 other forms that
could be distortions of this label—guájalo and güijalote—
also come from speakers in the south). Map 4-7, however,
shows a pattern that is consistent across the two surveys:
except for 1 of Kiddle’s cases, all occurrences of güíjolo/
gúíjalo are located in the western part of the region. This
fact ties in very nicely with the western distribution of
the term in Mexico and the Cahita source proposed by
Mendoza Guerrero (2002).
Standard Spanish Influence
Finally, we turn to the incursion into the NMCOSS region
of the kind of Spanish that is considered the norma culta
(‘cultivated norm’). Here, to the extent that a standard is
recognized, it is generally considered to be the educated
speech of Mexico. The notion of this standard is intro-
duced by Mexican immigration, by formal Spanish
instruction, and by the wider contacts that are often
made possible by higher education, greater income, and
the technological advances that have made for an increas-
ingly smaller world.
43
4-6. ‘Turkey’ – cócono

44 chapter four
 4-7. ‘Turkey’ – güíjolo

Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico 45

 Table 4-2. Responses for ‘Turkey’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
3 or more
No courses 1 course 2 courses courses
gallina de la tierra 5.0 0.0 0.0 2.8
ganso 25.8 28.6 25.4 21.1
guajolote 5.8 7.9 16.9 12.7
guajalote 2.5 4.8 0.0 5.6
cócono 16.7 11.1 15.3 12.7
cócano 15.8 9.5 8.5 8.5
güíjalo 1.7 1.6 0.0 2.8
torque (terque, turkey) 25.8 30.2 20.3 19.7
pavo (pavón) 0.8 6.3 10.2 12.7
Other response 0.0 0.0 3.4 1.4
N 120 63 59 71

The 2 archaic verb forms that are typically frowned on
by speakers of standard Spanish demonstrate the connec-
tions. Those NMCOSS consultants who had achieved
higher levels of education were more likely to use the stan-
dard vi ‘I saw’ instead of the rustic vide. Those who had
taken more Spanish courses in high school or college were
more likely to use the formal trajo ‘He brought,’ avoiding
the nonstandard trujo (see Bills and Vigil 1999c, 879–80).
And this brings us to our last ‘Turkey’—for which
the reader is no doubt giving thanks even if it’s not
November! The standard Spanish term for turkey is pavo
(which itself represents a semantic change from its origi-
nal meaning, in Latin as well as Old Spanish, of ‘peacock,’
a fowl that now goes by the descriptive phrase, pavo
real, a ‘real turkey,’ or perhaps a ‘royal turkey’?). Pavo
has never become very well established in New Mexico
and southern Colorado. This form represents only 8%
of Kiddle’s responses and the same proportion (7.6%) in
the NMCOSS. The geographical distribution of this form
reveals no patterning of interest; in both surveys, persons
who offered pavo occur haphazardly across the region.
Although guajolote is the dominant form in Mexico,
the pavo label is documented widely and prominently in
the Mexico atlas. It also seems to occur quite commonly
elsewhere in the Southwest. It accounts for 13% of the
responses in Pedrero’s study (2002), the second strongest
response after guajolote. Alvar (2000) indicates that 3 of
those 8 responses are from the NMCOSS region, 2 from
northern New Mexico and 1 from southern Colorado.
One might well suppose that pavo is a learned form
acquired through exposure to standard Spanish. Its
rarity in the NMCOSS could be a result of physical or
social distance from standard Mexican Spanish. Its few
occurrences might be attributable to the formal study of
Spanish or travel to other parts of the Spanish-speaking
world. Such a hypothesis is supported by the associations
of pavo with two social variables: study of Spanish and
years of education.
Table 4-2 reveals a strong association between the
use of the term pavo and formal Spanish study. Of the 120
individuals who reported never having taken a Spanish
course in school, only 1 offered the term pavo as their
first choice. On the other hand, 13% of those with three
of more years of formal Spanish did so. That is, formal
study of Spanish accounts for a 12% shift in the preference
for the Standard Spanish label. None of the other terms
shows such an impact. The next strongest association is
with the colloquial standard form of Mexico, guajolote.
In similar fashion, table 4-3 shows that number of
years of education is also associated with the use of pavo.
This standard Spanish term was offered by not 1 of the 64
who failed to reach high school, by only 3 of the 50 high
school dropouts, by just 5 of the 82 holding a high school
diploma, and by only 5 of the 63 having some college
experience, but was preferred by 12 of the 68 who had
completed at least a bachelor’s degree. The swing from 0%
to 18% demonstrates the role of education in the prefer-
ence for a Standard Spanish term.

46 chapter four
 Table 4-3. Responses for ‘Turkey’ by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11 12 13–15 16 or more
gallina de la tierra 9.4 0.0 1.2 0.0 1.5
ganso 25.0 28.0 20.7 27.0 26.5
guajolote 7.8 6.0 12.2 17.5 7.4
guajalote 3.1 2.0 1.2 6.3 1.5
cócono 15.6 16.0 20.7 9.5 8.8
cócano 15.6 14.0 11.0 6.3 8.8
güíjalo 3.1 0.0 0.0 1.6 2.9
torque (terque, turkey) 20.3 28.0 25.6 22.2 23.5
pavo (pavón) 0.0 6.0 6.1 7.9 17.6
Other response 0.0 0.0 1.2 1.6 1.5
N 64 50 82 63 68

Since all but 1 of the NMCOSS consultants are native-
born and therefore all but 1 educated in the United States,
a question arises: why should advanced schooling in
English influence familiarity with a Spanish word? Three
explanations come to mind. First, the number of years
of education in general is closely associated with formal
study of Spanish. It has long been typical in U.S. education
that students have the opportunity to study a language
other than English only at the high school or college
levels. Second, the opportunity to travel abroad increases
as level of education increases, and exposure to speakers
of standard Spanish is enhanced by such travel. Finally,
the more highly educated are more likely to engage in
communication with the educated international visitors
and others who use the term pavo. As in other contexts,
how we handle one language can be affected in subtle but
profound ways by education in another language.
Conclusions
This overview of the history of New Mexican Spanish
illustrated by the words for ‘Turkey’ provides a perspective
quite distinct from a historical approach that focuses
on powerful individuals. However much we might
like to believe that language change moves toward
that language that we perceive to be good and proper,
the fact is that the flow of language over time is chan-
neled by the common people, not the elite. A language is
the epitome of a democracy, where we the people, all the
people participate actively. Language change floats lazily
about on the linguistic whims of the masses, drifting one
way today and another tomorrow. But the days are more
like centuries.
This chapter clearly demonstrates that just since
Kiddle collected his data there has been a dramatic shift
in distribution patterns and use of ‘Turkey’ forms in the
NMCOSS region. The big losers are precisely the forms
historically linked to that unique Traditional Spanish.
The big winners are forms associated with demographic
trends over the past century. Those forms that are related
to contact with Mexican Spanish, English, and education
display increasing use and geographical expansion and
are near-certain indicators of what New Mexican Spanish
will look like in the future. But don’t bet on it.

Historical Overview of the Spanish Language and Culture in New Mexico 47

Part II

The Formation
of Traditional
New Mexican Spanish
 Chap ter 5
Retentions
The Peninsular Origins of
New Mexican Spanish
Lexical Retentions
All dialects of Spanish share a huge stock of lexical,
grammatical, and phonological features. We may assume
that this common stock represented in the minds of all
Spanish speakers is what makes Spanish “Spanish” and
not German or Chinese or Navajo. What are those linguis-
tic entrails, that set of common features? Who knows!
Given the nature of individual variation (idiolects), it is
surely a practical impossibility to produce either a gram-
mar or a dictionary of the core of any language, of the
linguistic knowledge that all speakers share. On the lexi-
cal side, the best dictionaries have a broader, more inclu-
sionary aim—to incorporate all the words of all dialects.
No dictionary has accomplished that either, for other
very practical reasons. New words crop up here and there
daily; dictionary makers have to gather evidence of a
word, orally or in writing, before they can put it in the
dictionary. But such an inclusive task reports on what
people do, and therefore is probably more manageable
than documenting the common core of a language, which
must probe what people know, especially for a language as
widely spoken as Spanish.
Whatever these common features are, they were
passed down through many generations. The fifteenth-
century inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula had in their
heads much of those same linguistic entrails that charac-
terize any Spanish dialect today. New Mexican Spanish is
archaic in the sense of retaining many features that come
down from fifteenth-century Spain. But, of course, so are
all Spanish dialects spoken today, from Madrid to Manila,
from Nicaragua to New York, from Santiago de Chile to
the Sephardic Spanish communities of the Middle East.
All have a common grammatical and lexical core that is
rooted in Medieval Spanish.
However, people who play with words typically con­-
sider something to be an archaic linguistic feature only
if it has disappeared from the standard language. Thus,
in popular usage, a retained feature is an archaism only
if it is no longer used in the variety that those who adopt
the mantle of linguistic legislators determine to be the
“correct” one. In other words, archaisms are treated as
“abnormal” things that occur outside the norma culta (the
“cultivated norm” as standard Spanish is often called).
Accepting this perspective, numerous Spanish scholars
51
have been content to label as archaic any older usage
that does not occur in the Spanish of educated speak-
ers of central Spain, a variety that was famously codified
for centuries by the Real Academia Española, the Royal
Spanish Academy.
Thus, the task that Isaías Lerner set for himself in his
rigorous scholarly study of American Spanish archaisms
was to compile a list of words that (1974, 9):
(5-1)
1) han dejado de usarse en el castellano general de
España y siguen vivas en la lengua general de
América;
2) han dejado de usarse en la lengua general de
España y América, pero permanecen en el
habla popular y rural de América;
3) han dejado de usarse en el castellano general
de España; tuvieron vigencia en la literatura de
los siglos XVI y XVII y hoy se oyen en algunas
regiones de España como formas dialectales y
en el habla rural americana.
1) ‘are no longer used in the standard Castilian
Spanish of Spain and remain alive in the
general language of the Americas;
2) are no longer used in the standard language of
Spain and America, but remain in the popular
and rural speech of the Americas;
3) are no longer used in the standard Spanish
of Spain; they were in effect in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century literature and are heard
today as dialect forms in some regions of Spain
and in rural speech of the Americas.’
That is, standard Castilian Spanish by definition can have
no archaisms; only those other dialects do. Naturally
enough, this chauvinistic perspective has resulted in a
long series of polemical treatises that essentially under-
mine the whole notion of linguistic archaism. (The book
by Jiménez Ríos 2001 treats with clarity and sensitivity
the history and broad range of issues associated with the
notion of archaisms in Spanish.)
Observers often characterize Traditional Spanish as
highly archaic in this dogmatic sense because of its history
of relative seclusion. Lerner’s list of 1,500 American
Spanish archaisms includes many words that occur in
New Mexican Spanish, such everyday words as almuerzo
‘Breakfast’ (standard Castilian desayuno whereas
almuerzo is reserved for the noon meal), chiflar ‘whistle’
(standard Castilian silbar), durazno ‘Peach’ (melocotón),
52
enojar ‘anger’ (enfadar), ensartar ‘Thread a needle’ (enhe-
brar), frijol ‘bean’ (judía, habichuela), machucar ‘mash,
crush’ (machacar), mercar ‘buy’ (comprar), prieto ‘dark
complected’ (moreno), and sopaipilla ‘deep-fried bread
dough rectangles’ (no equivalent word in Castilian
today). Although the concept of archaism itself is of
limited usefulness, and it is certainly a practical impossi-
bility to accurately assess the extent to which one dialect
differs from another in archaicness, Traditional Spanish
seems to have many archaisms of this conventional kind.
An examination of some apparent archaisms can be both
educational and entertaining.
A classic example of an archaism is the verb for
‘Wake up,’ depicted in map 5-1, which reveals that the
recordar variant, marked with green circles, is a feature of
Traditional Spanish. Its use is illustrated in example 5-2,
uttered by a sixty-three-year-old woman from Carriso,
New Mexico, who was describing her first experience at a
wake for a deceased relative:
(5-2) Pero qué puede uno de seis años sino
quedarse dormido ahi, y le daban un codazo
y recordaba uno. ‘But what can a six-year-old
do except fall asleep there, and they’d give
you a poke with the elbow and you’d wake
up.’ (interview 77)
This verb reflects an old, old usage found, for example, in
the fourteenth-century manuscript of the Cantar de Mio
Cid, lines 2790–91 (Marcos Marín 1997, 466):
(5-3) Van Recordando don eluira e doña sol,
Abrieron los oios e vieron a felez muñoz.
‘Doña Elvira and Doña Sol are waking up,
They opened their eyes and saw Félez Muñoz.’
Similar uses of recordar for ‘Wake up’ are found in such
other early Spanish literary works as the Lazarillo de
Tormes (Cejador y Frauca 1969, 142) and La Celestina
(Rojas 1960, 159).
In the standard Spanish of central Spain, however,
the meaning of recordar has become limited to ‘remem-
ber’ and ‘remind.’ Recordar for ‘Wake up,’ then, is one of
those orthodox archaisms. Yet, the word remains widely
used with the meaning ‘Wake up’ in colloquial varieties
of Spanish around the world. Moreno de Alba, for exam-
ple, notes that this archaism is a feature of rural Mexico
(1992a, 56). Lerner reports widespread use in the New
World. And the Diccionario de la lengua española of the
Real Academia Española (henceforth, the DRAE)—which
chapter five
 5-1. ‘Wake up’

Retentions 53
has now adopted a more liberal attitude in acknowledg-
ing dialect variation—reports such use of recordar in
Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, the Dominican
Republic, and two regions of Spain.
Vocabulary is perhaps the most easily perceived and
identified aspect of linguistic variation, and archaisms
in the popular sense are perhaps the most stigmatized
feature of nonstandard vocabulary. Map 5-1 suggests that
the archaic use of recordar suffers from stigmatization.
Although Pedrero (2002, 105) finds recordar to be the
majority form for New Mexican Spanish in her limited
and more elderly sample, it is preferred by just 35% of
the NMCOSS consultants (109 responses). The stan-
dard despertar is making clear inroads into Traditional
Spanish territory. As we’ll see later, exposure to the
broader Spanish-speaking world heightens awareness of
the recordar stigma and favors the adoption of desper-
tar. Despertar is now the majority label in New Mexican
Spanish, the preferred form of 59% of the consultants
(186 responses). We should note that despertar is real-
ized in about a fourth of the cases as dispertar, which is
also nonstandard but not as strongly stigmatized. These 2
variants are combined for the map because their distribu-
tions show no distinct geographical patterning.
Similarly noteworthy is the fact that the infinitival
forms of recordar and despertar are sometimes reported
as recuerdar and despiertar. These verbs belong to the
class of stem-changing words that diphthongize o to ue
(in words such as recordar) and e to ie (in words such as
despertar) when stressed, yielding contrasting forms such
as recordamos ‘we wake up’ versus recuerda ‘she wakes up’
and despertamos ‘we wake up’ versus despierta ‘she wakes
up.’ The extension of diphthongization to unstressed
vowels occurs regularly in New Mexican Spanish (see
Harris 1974), notably among those who suffer some loss of
Spanish skills. Thus, forms such as puedemos for podemos
‘we can’ and empiezar for empezar ‘begin’ can sometimes
be heard. In a forced choice between standard enterrar
and innovative entierrar ‘Bury,’ for example, 16% of the
NMCOSS consultants opted for the innovative form. For
the ‘Wake up’ variable, however, our intent was to docu-
ment only the contrasting words and not their pronun-
ciation, and predictable responses of either recuerda
‘he’ll wake up’ or va a recordar ‘he’s going to wake up’
(among the many other possibilities) met our intent. As
with despertar, then, the varied realizations of recordar
are combined for presentation on map 5-1.
The ‘Wake up’ variable also illustrates how indi-
vidual interpretation of a given situation can be one of
those little obstacles in the interview process. To elicit
54
this variable, the interviewer showed a picture of a man
asleep beside an alarm clock and asked what the man
would do when the alarm sounded. Was this a sure-fire
way to get the desired response? Well, no: 12 consul-
tants offered—and sometimes insisted on—levantarse
‘get up, arise’ as the appropriate response. Such reason-
able responses test the mettle of even the most skilled of
interviewers. They also demonstrate how difficult it is to
design an interview schedule as described in chapter 2
that assures that the people interviewed “provide compa-
rable data, that is, the same linguistic features produced
under the same circumstances.”
Turning to a different variable, we see that the
responses for ‘Blouse’ reveal a retention in a still more
precarious situation. This item was elicited by means
of a picture of a woman dressed in a skirt and blouse—
a traditional white blouse with a few frills. Map 5-2
demonstrates that the dominant term for ‘Blouse’ in New
Mexican Spanish is clearly the standard Spanish vari-
ant blusa, offered as the label of preference by 61% of the
328 respondents (we use the term respondents to refer to
all those questioned about an item, including those who
were unable to give a response). The term blusa prevails
resolutely throughout the Border Spanish areas, but also
appears strongly in the Traditional Spanish region.
But as map 5-2 illustrates, a very special term,
cuerpo, is associated with Traditional Spanish. Such an
unusual term for ‘Blouse’ merits exemplification from the
NMCOSS conversational data. Example 5-4 comes from a
sixty-seven-year-old woman from Ratón, NM:
(5-4) Ora usan el cuerpo largo y los pantalones muy
ajustados. ‘Now they wear long blouses and
very tight-fitting pants.’ (interview 307)
A total of 82 of our consultants (25%) elected to use this
label. Like those who use recordar for ‘Wake up,’ they
tend to be older and to represent more rural areas of the
Traditional Spanish heartland.
Where does this term come from? Cuerpo in stan-
dard Spanish (as manifested in the DRAE) carries a vari-
ety of meanings like its conventional English gloss ‘body.’
The only meaning associated with clothing that is recog-
nized in the DRAE is not a separate piece but a part of
a dress, that part from the waist to the neck (English
‘bodice,’ which transparently derives from body). So
maybe this term in New Mexican Spanish represents not
an archaism but rather an independent extension of the
meaning of cuerpo to include this article of clothing that
covers the same area of the body as a bodice.
chapter five
 5-2. ‘Blouse’

Retentions 55
 Cobos (2003) cites a convincing example that he
attributes to the standard-setting picaresque novel, La
vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversi-
dades (‘The life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of his fortunes
and adversities’), published anonymously in 1554 or earlier
(see Cejador y Frauca 1969):
(5-5) hízolo . . . vistiéndole con una saya y cuerpo
de una criada suya. ‘He did it . . . by dressing
him in a skirt and a blouse of one of his maids.’
(Cobos’s translation)
Such use would indicate that the extension of meaning took
place centuries ago in Spain and that the word is in fact an
archaism. Unfortunately, we have been unable to find the
exact source of this citation, and we have found no other
early example where the reference is clearly to ‘Blouse.’
Consequently, we can only tentatively suggest that this form
is an archaism in New Mexican Spanish and appears to
have been brought early into the area. Besides, the standard
blusa (like English blouse) is a relatively recent borrowing
from French, documented in the Corpus diacrónico del
español (CORDE) only from 1828. Nevertheless, the fact
that only a fourth of the NMCOSS consultants offered the
cuerpo label suggests that this unique feature of Traditional
Spanish is being lost. Its limited distribution on map 5-2
supports this conclusion.
In this connection, it is relevant to note that a signif-
icant proportion of the respondents (14%) proposed
neither the waning cuerpo nor the waxing blusa. For
example, 13 persons suggested camisa ‘shirt,’ 20 offered
only the English blouse, and 6 were stumped, unable to
provide a label. Almost every person who offered 1 of
these 3 responses represents the Traditional Spanish area.
The loss of Spanish skills inherent in these responses plus
the spreading influence of the standard blusa provides
some account of the reduced showing of cuerpo.
But we must also consider the question: how could
14% of the consultants not have an appropriate Spanish
name for this commonplace piece of clothing? Perhaps
many are caught in the process of change, having had
some exposure to both the cuerpo and blusa labels but not
enough to have one or the other become firmly lodged in
their mental lexicons. It might also be argued that camisa
is in fact an adequate response. But an assessment of inad-
equacy is supported by the fact that the 3 types of response
came disproportionately from males (less sophisticated
regarding women’s clothing terms) and younger persons
(with generally weaker Spanish skills). For example, 8 of
56
the 13 who offered camisa are male, and only 1 of the 13 is
over forty-six years of age.
In contrast, only 2 persons were unable to provide
an adequate Spanish label for another article of feminine
clothing, ‘Dress.’ Furthermore—and perhaps conse-
quently, in this case the retained or archaic term is holding
on much more strongly. Map 5-3 displays the geographi-
cal distribution of the 3 appropriate words for ‘Dress,’ the
stimulus for which was a picture of a woman wearing
the conventional one-piece garment (short sleeves, knee-
length, belted, moderately formal but unceremonious).
Consultants responded with 3 basic terms: traje, túnico,
and vestido. Túnico is the dominant form for ‘Dress’ in our
survey (its use in conversational speech is seen in example
6-12 of the next chapter). This distinctive form represents
54% of the responses, a dominance clearly confirmed as
unique to the NMCOSS area in Alvar’s listing (2000, 205).
And as map 5-3 clearly demonstrates, it is most definitely
a feature of the Traditional Spanish dialect.
Túnico is an archaism that once had the same mean-
ing as the English cognate tunic (both from Latin tunĭca).
The word survives in Spanish generally as túnica, and
occasionally as túnico in the Americas, but almost always
with the meaning of an undergarment or the simple shift-
like garment of peasants or Native Americans. Santamaría
(1959), for example, defines the túnico of Mexico as follows:
En general, túnica, comúnmente usado por las mujeres
campesinas muy pobres ‘In general, a tunic, commonly
used by very poor peasant women’ (also see the similar
characterizations in the dictionary entries of Neves 1975
and Morínigo 1993). It is also said to refer to (or to have
once referred to) a long under-dress or camisole-type
garment in Central America, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela,
and Mexico (Morínigo 1998) as well as in southern Spain
(Malaret 1931).
But Sandoval (1942) describes túnico for Guatemala
as a garment of a different social status that seems associ-
ated with the original use in New Mexican Spanish: En la
moda pasada, vestido largo que usaron las señoras, menos
las mujeres de la clase baja del pueblo ‘In the old style, a
long dress used by ladies, but not by the women of the
populace’s lower class.’ And this reference to a long dress is
also reported for Cuba (Malaret 1931) and Santo Domingo
(Malaret 1942). Although in his 1959 Diccionario de meji-
canismos, Santamaría mentions túnico simply as ‘tunic,’ in
his earlier Diccionario de americanismos (1942) he reports
the ‘long dress’ meaning for Central America generally as
well as for the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Moreover,
Company (2002) reports a use of túnico in a Mexico City
chapter five
 5-3. ‘Dress’

Retentions 57
document from 1797. The document itself reports the
complaint of a nun against the advances of a priest who
was her regular confessor. The part of the complaint that
mentions túnico is as follows (Company 1994, 625):
(5-6) Varias veces preguntandole el padre q[ue]
si el tunico la lastimaba o incomodaba, lo
hacía en estos terminos en el tiempo de estarla
confesando: “¿te lastima el tunico los pechitos?.”
‘The priest, asking her several times if her dress
was causing her pain or discomfort, phrased it
in the following terms at the time of confessing
her: “Does your dress hurt your breasts?”’
In this context, of course, túnico refers to the clothing of a
nun, perhaps a long dress or perhaps a simpler nun’s habit.
Nevertheless, it testifies to the use of túnico in Mexico at
the end of the colonial period to refer to a woman’s dress-
like garment of more substance than a peasant’s shift.
Whatever its past use, today in the rest of the Spanish-
speaking world, the word túnico seems to be largely
unknown as the reference for a typical woman’s dress. In
New Mexican Spanish, then, túnico seems to be an archa-
ism in its tunic- root that has undergone innovation both
semantically (reference to a woman’s dress in general)
and grammatically (change to the masculine gender). But
“innovative archaism” sounds a bit discordant. Is it an
archaism or is it not?
In any case, like any archaism, it is perceived as
quaint and sometimes even uncouth by outsiders. The
negative attitude toward archaic vocabulary exemplified
by túnico is captured by the eminent Spanish novelist of
the nineteenth century, Benito Pérez Galdós, in his novel
El amigo manso (2001, 231). He describes the fictional
adjustment of a Cuban woman to the high culture of
Spain: logró reformar mucho sus modales y lenguaje, y
ya no llamaba túnico al vestido ‘she managed to greatly
reform her manners and language, and she no longer
called a dress a túnico.’
A second possibly archaic form for ‘Dress’ is traje,
which nowadays generally refers to ‘suit’ or ‘outfit’ in
standard Spanish. Only 13 persons, predominantly elderly
and from rural areas, offered traje as their preferred term
for ‘Dress.’ Its very limited occurrence as displayed on
map 5-3 indicates that it is a relic form that appears to be
disappearing in the NMCOSS region.
The label for ‘Dress’ generally considered standard is
vestido, a past participle nominalization derived from the
verb vestir ‘to dress.’ A total of 121 of the 333 respondents
(36%) preferred this form, which includes 15 instances
58
of the nonstandard variant vistido. Notice on map 5-3
that the vestido term is associated with Border Spanish.
It is the term of overwhelming preference only in the
extreme southern portion of New Mexico and other
areas that have experienced more immediate and contin-
uous contact with the standardizing currents of Spanish
in Mexico. Otherwise, vestido occurs only sporadically,
particularly in the Albuquerque and Santa Fe areas where
Mexican immigration has been significant. The random
distribution of vestido around the Traditional Spanish
area suggests that some of its occurrences are a conse-
quence of exposure to standard Spanish, in the classroom
or elsewhere, a topic we consider in chapter 14.
Why should the archaic túnico (54% of responses)
resist the invasion of the standard variant more force-
fully than the archaic recordarse for ‘Wake up’ (35%) and
cuerpo for ‘Blouse’ (25%)? Quite possibly because the
standard vestido typically has a very different meaning in
Traditional Spanish. It refers to a distinct article of cloth-
ing, a man’s ‘Suit,’ as we will see later in chapter 10 with
reference to map 10-14. The use of vestido for a man’s suit
and traje for a woman’s dress, a reversal of what many
consider standard Spanish, is not uncommon. Kany (1960,
172), for example, reports such usage for Chile, Panama,
and Peru. Alvar (2000, 199) documents vestido for a man’s
‘Suit’ not only in New Mexico and Colorado but also in
the Isleño Spanish of Louisiana, reported for the latter
as vistido by Armistead (1992, 274) and MacCurdy (1975,
512). And the linguistic atlas for Colombia shows vestido
to be the most common term for a man’s suit (ALEC vol.
4, mapa 5) as well as 1 of the 2 most common terms for a
woman’s dress (vol. 4, mapa 29). Furthermore, vestido was
the label for a man’s suit of clothing in Madrid early in the
seventeenth century, according to L. E. Miller (2006, 34).
Semantic conflicts of this sort, as well as other prob-
lems, surface with another variable, ‘Goose.’ In the previ-
ous chapter we noted that while ganso is one of a number
of words for ‘Turkey’ in New Mexican Spanish, both ganso
and ánsara are used to refer to a ‘Goose.’ However, the elic-
itation of the latter variable had the interviewers wading
through another data-collection hazard. Many consultants
lacked a specific word for this bird. Exactly one-third of the
342 respondents called it simply pato ‘duck’ and another
14% could provide only an English word or no response
at all. We received several other erroneous or inappropri-
ate responses, including 2 of guso! Thus, beyond providing
insight into the loss of Spanish (to be treated in chapter 13),
this item yields an accurately specific response from only a
minority of consultants. Still, 165 responses is a substantial
number for mapping purposes.
chapter five
 Map 5-4 shows that the 116 consultants (35%) who
responded with ganso and the 47 (14%) who responded with
ánsara (including 3 cases of ánsaro and 1 of ánsare) are scat-
tered all over the region surveyed. One thing that the map
does not show is that ánsara is a dying form used mostly by
the elderly and hardly volunteered at all by persons under
the age of forty (as we see later in chapter 12, table 12-2).
Ánsara enjoys the status of deriving from the Latin
word for ‘Goose,’ even though the direct transmission into
Spanish was as the masculine ánsar. Notwithstanding such
ancestry, the customary word for ‘Goose’ in most places is
ganso, a long-standing borrowing from the Germanic gans.
English is, of course, a Germanic language and the English
goose—and more transparently gander—derive from that
early Germanic form and are therefore cognates with
ganso. And interestingly enough, both the Latin anser and
Germanic gans are cognates, deriving from the same word
in the distant Indo-European mother language. Now, once
this Germanic borrowing settled in as a Spanish word, but
still at an early point in the linguistic history of Spain, it
seems that ganso came to refer to the domesticated goose
while ánsar referred to the wild version (Corominas 1954,
1:219). However, that distinction seems to no longer be
made and ganso has become the standard term for ‘Goose’
whether domesticated or wild.
Ánsara, therefore, would appear to be a kind of
archaism. One way of exploring this possibility is to
examine the occurrence of the word in two online data-
bases provided by the Real Academia Española. The
Corpus diacrónico del español (CORDE) contains some
235 million words of documents dating from the medi-
eval period to 1975, mostly from Spain but about a fourth
from the New World. The Corpus de referencia del español
actual (CREA), which contains about 150 million words,
represents current usage since 1975, with approximately
equal documentation from Spain and the Americas.
The CORDE provides just 4 examples of ánsara,
the earliest from the Fuero de Teruel, a legal treatise of
about 1300, and the other 3 from the 1620s. The CREA, the
corpus of current usage, does not record it at all. By tradi-
tional criteria, then, it is clearly an archaism. Does the
present documentation for New Mexico make it less of
an archaism? In contrast, the CORDE includes 91 cases of
the masculine alternative ánsar, dating from 1250, and 415
cases of ganso, dating from 1406. The CREA provides only
6 cases of ánsar but 195 of ganso. The DRAE recognizes
the masculine ánsar but it seems to be not widely used.
So, in the grand scheme of things Spanish, ganso is the
demographic champion and both ánsara and ánsar are
very marginal contenders. Is ánsar then also an archaism?
Retentions
Not according to the DRAE. Moreover, according to the
DRAE, ánsara doesn’t even exist! We can only conclude
that struggling with a characterization of archaisms leads
us down an unilluminating garden path. What is impor-
tant here, it seems to us, is to document some of the more
interesting of the multitude of linguistic bits that New
Mexican Spanish has retained from its roots in Spain.
That’s what we try to do in this chapter.
The usefulness of the term archaism is suspect in
other cases where the popular definition clearly applies.
For example, in Traditional Spanish the most common
term for ‘Socks’ is medias, offered by 185 of the 328
consultants questioned for this item (56%, see map 5-5).
Attesting to this association with Traditional Spanish,
Pedrero (2002, 58–59) reports 14 occurrences of this form
and Alvar (2000, 203) indicates that they were found only
in New Mexico and southern Colorado—and in eleven
of the fourteen communities there. In standard Spanish,
however, medias generally refers to the more typically
feminine article of leg wear, ‘hose, stockings, nylons,’ and
calcetines is widely considered the proper label for ‘Socks.’
Medias is the older word, its use antedating calcetines by
centuries. The latter is a fairly recent creation; its earliest
documentation in the CORDE is 1870. We may conclude
then that medias is a heritage Spanish word with deep
roots that has been replaced in Castilian Spanish by a
neologism that has gained the status of standard around
the world. A classic archaism?
Before responding to that question, we need to probe
the fascinating historical development of these labels. As it
turns out, both calcetines and medias have the same origin
in the use of the word calzas (from the Latin word for
‘shoe’) to label a foot covering or sock. In medieval Spanish
this foot covering grew higher and higher to become the
foot and leg covering worn by men, and these tights even-
tually reached up to the waist. But then the calzas split into
two pieces. The lower portion became the ‘half’ cover-
ing, medias calzas, which was soon shortened to medias.
Another option created for the lower pieces was the
diminutive calcetas, which via the vagaries of word deri-
vation was later transformed into the modern diminutive
calcetines. Ah, but what happened to the upper part of the
calzas? Well, as the bigger part, they eventually took on the
augmentative suffix to become calzones, a term we’ll see
again later when we deal with pants and underpants (with
the further evolutionary twist that even augmentatives can
be turned into diminutives, yielding calzoncillos). Finally,
we can’t leave this historical diversion without mentioning,
for those familiar with local speech, that the same Latin
origin is the source of the slang term calcos for ‘shoes.’
59
 5-4. ‘Goose’

60 chapter five
 5-5. ‘Socks’

Retentions 61
 But back to the 2 principal words for ‘Socks’ in New
Mexican Spanish. The DRAE considers calcetines as the
default label, and almost dismissively acknowledges the
same meaning for medias as simply an “Americanism,” a
label restricted to use in the Americas. If we look beyond
the typical textbook or student dictionary, however, we
find that medias for ‘Socks’ is indeed quite common in
the Americas. For example, it is the usual word for a man’s
‘Socks’ in Colombia, as documented in that country’s
linguistic atlas (ALEC vol. 4, mapa 17). It is unfortunate that
the Atlas lingüístico de México did not include this item, but
we know that medias for ‘Socks’ occurs widely in our neigh-
bor nation. In a conspicuous display of his prescriptivist
stripes, Santamaría (1959) says of medias: Promiscuamente
úsase entre el vulgo por medias, calcetines y escarpines ‘It is
used promiscuously among the common people for hose,
socks, and booties.’ So, the use of medias bonds Traditional
Spanish not only to the Iberian Peninsula as it once was but
also to the Spanish America that is. The label “archaism,”
like the label “fossil,” ought not be used in simplistic ways
that are likely to conceal living connections.
But map 5-5 has more interest. We see that the stan-
dard calcetines was the preference of 122 consultants (37%)
and superbly matches the pattern of Border Spanish. It also
shows the sporadic intrusions into Traditional Spanish that
are characteristic of standard Spanish terms competing
with stigmatized variants. Furthermore, where there is a
mismatch between home language and school language,
speakers often encounter difficulties with the learned
words, especially longer words such as the four-syllable
calcetines. Thus, our survey yielded several mispronuncia-
tions—2 instances of calcentines, 1 calcetinas, 1 calcitenes,
1 carcentiles, 1 carpentines, and 1 saquetines. These distor-
tions are not included on the map.
Finally, a minor variant that merits discussion is
another classical archaism, escarpines. This label for
‘Socks’ was offered as first choice by just 7 persons but was
mentioned as an alternative form by 4 others. This form is
an Old Spanish word that is documented in the CORDE
from 1441 and that is still widely used around the Spanish-
speaking world with diverse meanings related to a foot
covering (‘slipper,’ ‘sock worn over another sock,’ ‘baby
bootie,’ ‘spat,’ ‘legging,’ and even ‘sock’ in the Americas).
Of particular interest to us in map 5-5 is the geographical
distribution of the persons who mentioned escarpines: an
area to the south and west of Albuquerque, as far south
as the town of Truth or Consequences in Sierra County.
This pattern marks a subdialect of New Mexican Spanish
that is supported by several other variables, as we will see
later in chapter 16.
62
Another variable shows connections just the oppo-
site of the ‘Socks’ variable, further illuminating the
fuzziness of the archaism label. New Mexican Spanish
has 2 basic terms for ‘Apricot’: a Border Spanish term
representing 22% of the 325 responses and a Traditional
Spanish term representing 68%. But each has more than 1
realization. The Border term is the easy case—65 prefer-
ences for chabacán and 7 for chabacano. The Traditional
term too has just 2 major alternatives—98 cases of albar-
coque and 84 cases of albercoque. But words of four or
more syllables, especially ones with both r and l, often get
a little garbled in colloquial speech. As a matter of fact, we
received 40 minor realizations of the Traditional Spanish
label. For example, in addition to 8 cases of albaricoque, 4
of albericoque, and 9 of abercoque, there were 1 or 2 cases
each of deviant pronunciations such as abercorque, abre-
coque, albercoco, albercote, alborcorque, and arbacoque,
among others!
We have combined the 2 Border Spanish forms for
display on map 5-6, and their distribution reveals once
again the typical Border Spanish dialect pattern. We
have mapped separately, however, the 2 major Traditional
Spanish forms since they display somewhat distinctive
distributions. Albarcoque is more typical of the northern
half of the NMCOSS region and albercoque is more typi-
cal of central New Mexico. This display suggests another
subdialect split in Traditional Spanish that we’ll see
repeated several times. None of the minor realizations of
those Traditional Spanish forms are included on the map,
though it must be said that those forms with a in the second
syllable (e.g., the albaricoque cases) pattern like albarcoque
and those with e in the second syllable (e.g., the albericoque
and abercoque cases) pattern like albercoque.
Now, what are the historical connections of these
‘Apricot’ terms? The Traditional Spanish term represents
one of those early borrowings from Arabic. The Moors
dominated much of the Spanish peninsula for seven
hundred years, dating from AD 711. This contact natu-
rally led to the incorporation into Spanish of thousands of
Arabic words of high cultural value, including numerous
terms of everyday importance in New Mexican Spanish,
such as acequia ‘irrigation ditch,’ adobe ‘mud brick,’
algodón ‘cotton,’ almohada ‘pillow,’ and arroz ‘rice.’
The Arabic loanword for ‘Apricot’ was well-estab-
lished in Spain at the time of the conquest of the Americas
(as reported in Martínez Ruiz 1972, 43), and it is docu-
mented in the CORDE from 1552. So is it an archaism?
Well, not of the traditional sort. Why not? Because it is
considered the standard word used in Spain today. The
DRAE gives this standard as albaricoque, the a form
chapter five
 5-6. ‘Apricot’

Retentions 63
with five syllables, though it also accepts the four-syllable
a-form as a variant and the four- and five-syllable e-forms
as regional variants in Spain.
Turning to the Border Spanish term, the task of find-
ing historical and regional documentation becomes more
difficult, in part because chabacano is more widely used as
the name of a language of the Philippines and as an adjec-
tive meaning ‘awkward,’ ‘crude,’ or ‘tasteless.’ Corominas
(1954) tentatively associates this last meaning as a source
for chabacano the fruit. He cites uses of chabacano to
refer to a tree and fruit in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and proposes that an apricot is after all a sort of
an insipid peach (but Corominas never experienced the
tasteless peaches now often sold in U.S. supermarkets).
The DRAE acknowledges that chabacano may have
the ‘Apricot’ meaning specifically restricted to Mexico.
Indeed, both Corominas and Moreno de Alba assert
that chabacano is the predominant label for ‘Apricot’ in
modern Mexico, although the latter reports that albari-
coque, albericoque, and chabacán also occur sporadically
there (1992a, 167–68). Moreover, Moreno de Alba (59)
considers chabacano an archaism of continental scope in
Spanish America.
So which is the archaism? Is it the Border Spanish
form that has become prominent in the NMCOSS region
in just the past hundred years or so? The Traditional
Spanish form was almost certainly brought to New
Mexico by the first speakers of Spanish in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Does the Arabic loanword
in our area not represent an archaism? With respect to
Mexican Spanish, the basis of all New Mexican Spanish,
we might reasonably place the albarcoque-type forms in
the archaism category, for they are retentions of an older
form now little used in Mexico. For example, in Mendoza
Guerrero’s survey of the state of Sinaloa, 29 persons
reported chabacano and only 1 offered albaricoque (2002,
61). From the perspective of Castilian Spanish, on the
other hand, the albarcoque-type labels are pretty standard
fare. Does the use of the terms “archaism” and “standard”
help our understanding of this situation? We think not.
Then there are lexical retentions where neither vari-
ant holds a historicity advantage. Such is the case with the
term for ‘Marrow,’ the substance in the interior of a bone.
Both tútano and tuétano are documented in the CORDE
from the fifteenth century. But the CORDE contains only
10 cases of tútano versus 210 cases of tuétano. Similarly,
the recent corpus CREA includes not a single instance of
tútano and 99 cases of tuétano. It is important to recog-
nize that both corpora represent the normas cultas of
64
the different epochs; the CORDE is composed entirely
of written documents and 90% of the CREA comes from
the written language. Which of the equally old ‘Marrow’
forms, then, would you guess to be considered the archa-
ism? Tútano, of course. The DRAE does include tútano
but it is listed quaintly as desusada ‘no longer used.’
But tútano is in fact widely used around the Spanish-
speaking world. Consider the distributions of these 2
variants in New Mexican Spanish as depicted in map
5-7. The overwhelmingly preferred form throughout the
NMCOSS territory, accounting for nearly three-quarters
of the responses (222 of 309, 73%), is the so-called archa-
ism tútano. In contrast, only 34 consultants preferred
the standard tuétano variant. There were more consul-
tants who claimed ignorance of a suitable term (38) than
those who provided the standard label. The map shows
that most of the tuétano voters are located in the Border
Spanish areas, but as might be expected, those who favor
this standard variant also tend to be those who have had
a broader exposure to the Spanish language via the class-
room or contact with citizens of other countries.
Analogous to ‘Marrow’ is the case of the variable
that refers to the gunk (or more politely, matter) that may
accumulate in the eye overnight and that is usually called
‘Sleep’ in English. The DRAE establishes legaña as the
standard term and lagaña as the original and older word,
and therefore the archaism. This in spite of the fact that
the CREA includes examples of both, 4 cases of lagaña
and 10 of legaña, and the CORDE favors the archaism by a
margin of 10 to 1 (81 lagaña and 8 legaña). In this case, New
Mexican Spanish is about as “archaic” as can be. Fully
94% of the NMCOSS consultants (300 of 319) favored the
archaism. Only 9 persons mentioned the standard vari-
ant. Mexican Spanish too looks very archaic in this case.
Only about 6% of the ALM consultants mentioned the
standard legaña variant (mapa 718), and only 1 of the 60
participants in Mendoza Guerrero’s survey of Sinaloa did
so (2002, 92–93).
Numerous other lexical retentions that elsewhere
are typically banned from the norma culta are common
in New Mexican Spanish, and more particularly in
Traditional Spanish. To cite just a few examples, some
are distinct vocabulary, for example, estafeta ‘Post office’
versus standard oficina de correo, mercar ‘buy’ versus
standard comprar, cuero ‘Skin’ (of humans as well as other
animals) versus standard piel for humans, cobija ‘Blanket’
versus standard manta. Others are simply modest differ-
ences in form, such as mesmo ‘same,’ dende‘ since, from,’
and asina ‘thus’ for now standard mismo, desde, and así.
chapter five
 5-7. ‘Marrow’

Retentions 65
 Grammatical Retentions
While educated visitors from other Spanish-speaking
countries may view lexical archaisms as merely quaint
and endearing, grammatical archaisms are often greeted
very differently. In New Mexican Spanish there are plenty
of retentions of grammatical forms that elsewhere have
developed into slightly different forms that are now
deemed more acceptable in the norma culta. Some are so
modestly different as to escape notice, such as the expres-
sion of obligation with tener de instead of now standard
tener que (Lope Blanch 1989, 191):
(5-7) Los padres tenían de ir a pidir a la muchacha y
tú no ibas. ‘The parents had to go ask for the girl
[in marriage] and you [the son] didn’t go along.’
(interview 218)
However, most grammatical archaisms are highly stig-
matized, often treated with the disdain accorded to ain’t by
many teachers of English. Some outsiders heap derision on
verb forms that were in fact the norm in medieval Spanish,
forms such as seigo ‘I am’ and semos ‘we are’ (standard soy
and somos), vido ‘he saw’ (standard vio), haiga ‘that there
be’ (standard haya), truje ‘I brought’ (standard traje), and
caiba ‘she was falling’ (standard caía). That derision has
engendered a lot of the linguistic insecurity discussed
under myth 1 in chapter 2. The healthy reaction to such
criticism, of course, is pride in the down-home flavor of
one’s heritage language. Such salubrious linguistic self-
esteem may be admired in the delightfully picaresque novel
Inocencio: Ni pica ni escarda pero siempre se come el mejor
elote (1992) and the collection of short stories (1997) by Juan
Estevan Arellano and in the wonderful series of oral narra-
tives from the Río Puerco and Río Pecos valleys collected
and presented by Nasario García (1987, 1992, 1994, 1997a,
1997b, 1999, 2004, 2005).
We will illustrate the presence of grammatical
retentions in New Mexican Spanish by treating just two
examples in greater detail. The first is the verb form for
‘I saw,’ that is, the first person singular form of the verb
ver in the preterit (the past tense employed to describe
completed events). The modern Spanish infinitive ver
derives from the Latin form vidēre (the source of English
video and other legal and technical terms that are clas-
sical borrowings from Latin). As the Latin language in
the Iberian Peninsula evolved over centuries to become
what we now call Spanish, that d of the verb videre gradu-
ally disappeared from all forms of the verb, including the
infinitive. The last two forms to lose the d are the first and
third person singular forms of the preterit: vide, which
66
over time in certain communities became vie and even-
tually the now standard vi, and vido, which became the
now standard vio. Christopher Columbus, for example,
used the older forms, as in the following example from
his diary:
(5-8) [V]ide muchos árboles muy diferentes de
los nuestros ‘I saw many trees very different
from ours.’ (cited by Gútemberg 1984, 21;
our translation)
Both of the older forms are retained in the rural and
rustic Spanish of many areas of Spain and the Americas.
Both are prominent in the Spanish of New Mexico.
As can be imagined, these forms could not be read-
ily elicited by the picture method. Instead we used a
more formidable procedure in which we presented a
series of sentences that were to be completed along the
following lines:
(5-9) El me mandó verlo, y ayer yo lo _____.
‘He sent me to see it, and yesterday I _____ it.’
(5-10) Tú le mandaste verlo, y ayer ella lo _____.
‘You sent her to see it, and yesterday she _____ it.’
While example 5-9 is appropriately completed with vide
or vi, example 5-10 is appropriately completed with vido
or vio.
One might expect that this more test-like methodol-
ogy would be fraught with problems for both the inter-
viewer and the interviewee. Such was not the case. With
a little experience, the interviewers became very effective
in leading the consultants through this task and securing
responses that were usually appropriate in both gram-
matical person and tense.
Map 5-8 shows the distributions of the 2 variants
of ‘I saw’ offered by the 316 consultants who completed
this exercise. What will first strike the reader about this
display is the lack of any significant patterning in the
distributions. Both forms occur across the region. There
is a tendency for more of the standard vi in the Border
Spanish areas and for more of the retention vide in the
rural areas of Traditional Spanish, but the contrasts are
not sharp like those of previous maps. Moreover, both
forms are about equally prominent: 159 preferences for vi
and 149 for vide. The fact that there were only 2 errors of
person (vimos ‘we saw’ and miró ‘he saw/watched’) and
1 error of tense (veo ‘I see’)—plus the single use of mirar
and 2 instances of the deviant veí—reveals the effective-
ness of the elicitation methodology.
chapter five
 5-8. ‘I saw’

Retentions 67
 With ‘I saw,’ then, we have 2 forms that carry the
same meaning, 2 variants of a single variable. Perhaps it is
just “free variation.” Perhaps people generally know both
forms and either might pop out on a given occasion. In
fact, 31 consultants offered both forms as equally accept-
able (in such cases, the first response was coded as the
first choice for mapping), which suggests that free varia-
tion is a possibility. But it turns out that 29 of those 31
instances of 2 responses occurred in the interviews of just
3 interviewers, the 3 research assistants most attuned to
the goals of the survey. That is, the multiple responses
were primarily a function of the interviewer pursuing
other possible responses rather than of the interviewee
independently providing multiple responses.
In fact, harkening to free variation as an explana-
tion for variation in language use is extremely rare these
days, usually deriving from the investigator’s inability to
discover the reasons underlying the distinct choices. As
Chambers and Trudgill state, “this type of variation is
not ‘free’ at all, but constrained by social and/or linguis-
tic factors” (1980, 60; see also Chambers 1995, 12–20). It
is almost always the case that the use of one or another
of variant forms of a single lexical variable carries some
kind of meaning, either about the speaker or the speaker’s
intent. The absence of significant geographical pattern-
ing in the distributions of the forms of ‘I saw’ means, of
course, that the use of one or the other of the forms does
not reveal the region that one represents. The forms are
not markers of regional dialect, in which case it is very
likely that the choice carries some kind of social meaning.
The fact that one variant is a disdained stigmatized archa-
ism and the other a respected standard form suggests that
exposure to standard Spanish is part of the hidden mean-
ing here, a topic we explore in some depth in chapter 14.
The second grammatical retention we treat here is the
preterit form of another verb, traer ‘bring,’ which has two
variants of the root in the preterit, traj- and truj-. In this
case, however, we will deal with the third person plural
form, which brings another dimension to the variation,
that is, the form of the suffix, either -eron or -ieron. Our
‘They brought’ variable therefore displays two independent
potentials for variation, in the root and in the suffix.
Truj- is one of those “strong” forms of the preterit
(like supieron ‘they knew’ for the verb saber ‘know’) that
derive from irregularities that already existed in Latin. As
the Spanish language developed, the root evolved through
a series of phonological changes to arrive at truj- in some
communities. In other communities the form was regu-
larized so that the vowel of the preterit has the same a
that occurs in other forms of the verb traer, such as traen
68
‘they bring’ and traían ‘they were bringing.’ According to
Ralph Penny (2000, 212), both the irregular and regular
preterit forms of traer were accepted in literary Spanish
into the seventeenth century. Thus, a search for trajeron
and trujeron by centuries in the CORDE, which (we stress
again) is based entirely on written documents, shows only
a slight preference for trajeron in the sixteenth (59%) and
seventeenth (57%) centuries. But the users of the regular-
ized traj- quickly won out in the competition for prestige
and their version became the standard. Thus, the CORDE
data demonstrate a 96% or higher frequency of trajeron
in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. In
the CREA, the corpus since 1975, there are over a thou-
sand cites of trajeron but only four of trujeron.
Turning now to the other element of the ‘They
brought’ variable, the preterit form of the third person
plural suffix exhibits a contrary process in settling on
the standard. That suffix is realized as -ieron in almost
all -er and -ir verbs (e.g., comieron ‘they ate,’ vivieron
‘they lived’). One class of exceptions includes verb roots
that end in j, like traj- and truj-. This j for a time in Old
Spanish represented a palatal sound like the first conso-
nant of English azure or the second consonant of English
measure or both consonants of the French pronuncia-
tion of Gigi. The palatal sound absorbed the very similar
following i, resulting in the -eron in trajeron and truje-
ron, and later shifted to become a velar sound articulated
farther back in the oral cavity. At this point, many speak-
ers began to regularize that ending to -ieron, yielding
trajieron and trujieron. But it was too late. The irregular
form trajeron was already established as the form to be
emulated. In the CORDE data by centuries, neither regu-
larized suffix (that is, neither trajieron nor trujieron) has
held more than a 2% niche in the marketplace of the third
person preterit for traer.
We’d like to pause here, for a moment, to make a
point about linguistic change that should be apparent in
our examples. Language change is not movement on a scale
of quality—either up or down. It does not yield a better or
worse product. Trujeron, trajeron, trujieron, and trajieron
are equally effective communicative devices in the commu-
nities in which they are used, just as they brought and they
brung are in the appropriate English-speaking communi-
ties. The fact that the older form brought is recognized as
the standard in English while the innovative form traje-
ron is recognized as standard in Spanish illustrates the
arbitrariness of language change. Change is a more or less
random process unlinked to value. The assignment of value
to particular variants is equally arbitrary—and equivalent
to all other forms of prejudice.
chapter five
 In the NMCOSS, the forms for ‘They brought’ were
elicited as part of the same sentence completion activity
described in examples 5-9 and 5-10 for ‘see.’ The responses
are distributed among the four expected categories as
follows: 55 trajeron (18%), 95 trajieron (31%), 116 trujieron
(37%), and just 4 trujeron (1%). Or to look at it another way:
there are 150 standard traj- versus 120 archaic truj-, and
there are 59 standard -eron versus 211 innovative -ieron.
That is, in New Mexican Spanish, adoption of the standard
root form traj- is far more advanced than adoption of the
standard form of the suffix. The archaic root appears to be
more stigmatized than the regularized suffix.
There was only 1 tense error—traen ‘they bring’—but
a whopping 40 instances (13%) of malformed trayeron. The
latter form is achieved by conjugating traer as if it were
entirely regular (like cayeron ‘they fell’ for caer). That could
be a perfectly natural development in the mental grammars
of some individuals. However, we don’t recall ever hearing
a spontaneous trayeron in the conversational data of the
thousand hours of NMCOSS tapes that we have listened
to. We believe that all or most of these 40 cases represent
a performance error attributable to less developed profi-
ciency in Spanish as well as to the communicative unnatu-
ralness of the elicitation procedure.
Now let’s take a look at the geographical distributions
of the ‘They brought’ responses (see map 5-9). For this map,
the few responses of trujeron are included with trujieron.
Unlike the ‘I see’ variable, both variants of which are
scattered haphazardly across the NMCOSS area, the ‘They
brought’ variable displays clear geographical differentia-
tion of the variants. The standard stem traj- is strongly
dominant in the south of New Mexico and prominent
in the other Border Spanish areas while the archaic truj-
stem is more typical of Traditional Spanish. However,
both of the traj- forms have penetrated significantly into
the Traditional Spanish homeland. It will be no surprise
to find these forms, particularly the fully standard traje-
ron, to be associated with social factors such as years of
education. The aberrant trayeron responses reveal no
regional patterning.
Phonological Retentions
Finally, there are also phonological archaisms. A partic-
ularly noticeable case concerns words written with the
“silent letter” h in standard Spanish. That h used to corre-
spond to a consonant sound, like the h in English, but
the dropping of the sound became prominent in central
Spain in the sixteenth century and gradually became the
standard for Spanish, leaving the archaic pronunciation
Retentions
of the h as a widespread feature of rural and unculti-
vated speech (see Penny 2000, 54–55, 121–22). The writ-
ten language typically lags behind language change, so
the letter h has been retained in Spanish orthography, a
spelling convention that represents one of the most seri-
ous spelling problems in Spanish literacy worldwide.
The consonant sound associated with h in earlier
Spanish is often retained in Traditional Spanish. In
our citation of examples, we transcribe the sound with
j as in José. Thus, we hear commonplace forms such as
jallar ‘find’ (standard hallar), jediondo ‘stinky’ (standard
hediondo), jervir ‘boil’ (standard hervir), and juir ‘flee’
(standard huir), as illustrated in examples 5-11 to 5-14:
(5-11) Había veces que jallaba a mi mamá llorando
en la ventana esta. ‘There were times when
I’d find my mother crying at this window.’
(interview 127)
(5-12) Apesta mucho, ole muy jediondo. ‘It gives
off a really bad smell, it smells very stinky.’
(interview 2)
(5-13) Lo jierves con cal y lo dejas jervir muncho.
‘You boil it [the corn] with lime and you let it
boil a long time.’ (interview 86)
(5-14) Se juyeron para casarse. ‘They ran away to get
married.’ (interview 89)
Pronouncing the h is not an across-the-board
phenomenon, however. Hombre ‘man,’ hambre ‘hunger,’
hija ‘daughter,’ and hermana ‘sister,’ for example, are
never pronounced with an initial consonant sound. On
the other hand, the standard oso ‘Bear’ (discussed in more
detail later regarding map 8-1) is frequently pronounced
joso in Traditional Spanish though it never had an initial
consonant otherwise.
The archaic pronunciation of h is manifest in the
principal variant for ‘Slingshot,’ which was elicited by a
picture of the homemade variety showing a forked stick
with a rubber or elastic band for propelling small rocks.
It is clear from map 5-10 that the form jonda, retaining
the pronunciation of the initial consonant, is a feature
of Traditional Spanish. The innovation that yields the
now-standard pronunciation as honda (that is, with no
audible initial consonant) is characteristic of Border
Spanish, though it is also scattered here and there across
the Traditional Spanish area, as we’ve come to expect
of forms that heal the stigma of archaism. In this case,
Mexican Spanish is very different from Traditional
Spanish. Mapa 801 of the ALM apparently includes only
1 instance of jonda (in central Mexico). And even honda
69
 5-9. ‘They brought’

70 chapter five
 5-10. ‘Slingshot’

Retentions 71
 Table 5-1. Archaic pronunciation responses for four h-initial variables (percentages)
‘Slingshot’
Initial j (i.e., [x], archaic) 52.7
Initial h (i.e., Ø, standard) 13.7
Anglicism response or No response 21.3
Other response 12.2
N 328
turns out to be only a minority variant manifest in north-
ern Mexico. In Mendoza Guerrero’s survey of Sinaloa, for
example, only 4 persons from a single town mentioned
honda (2002, 104–5).
Stronger than honda as markers of Border Spanish are
3 other words for ‘Slingshot.’ The dominant form in Mexico
is resortera, and map 5-10 exposes its status as a characteris-
tic of the Border Spanish dialect, where it was pronounced
in a third of the cases as resoltera (but this is not a dialect
like Puerto Rican Spanish that regularly pronounces a
syllable-final r as l). A second Border Spanish term, tira-
dor, surfaces only in the southwestern part of New Mexico.
Curiously, the ALM indicates that this label is typical only
of marginal areas of Mexico, the northeast and northwest
coast areas and the far south. It is the strongly favored term,
for example, in Sinaloa on the Gulf of California coast
(Mendoza Guerrero 2002, 104–5).
Lastly, an unpleasantly racist Anglicism occurs
across southern New Mexico and the area of eastern New
Mexico that is often called “Little Texas” because of its
cultural ties to the adjacent state. We received a total of
17 first choices of the English borrowing niggershooter
(including 1 or 2 cases each of the integrated forms niga-
chuta, nigachura, nigachuti, niguichuti, and niquichuri),
making it the fourth most common form after jonda
(with 171 preferences), honda (44), and unintegrated
English slingshot (24). There were 3 other persons, all
from the “Little Texas” region, who offered niggershooter
as a second or coequal choice. For Texas Spanish, Galván
and Teschner (1975) give 3 alternative labels, nigashura,
nigasura, and niguesura, and Hernández (1970) cites niga-
sura in his amateur dictionary that focuses on slang. And
Lope Blanch (1990a, 88), who found only jonda among his
4 Mora, New Mexico, subjects, reports that the 5 persons
interviewed in San Marcos, Texas, offered ligachura,
negachura, negachuri, and nigachure as well as 1 jonda.
It is of interest to note that the ALM documents 1 case of
nigasura and 2 instances of the folk etymology ligasura
(liga means ‘band’) in Mexico along the southern Texas
72
‘Mushroom’ ‘Tracks’ ‘Smoke’
45.9 41.2 28.7
23.1 27.0 69.0
26.7 10.7 0.0
4.2 21.1 2.4
333 337 335
border, and Armistead (1992, 269) documents nigachú in
the Isleño Spanish of Louisiana.
Both of us recall that the English word was also the
typical form from our childhoods in Clayton, New Mexico,
and Fort Worth, Texas. Atwood (1962, 68, 231) demon-
strates the ubiquity of the term in the 1950s among English
speakers in Texas and adjacent states, including 8 of 10
persons surveyed in southern and eastern New Mexico (the
only areas of the state he sampled). Numerous attestations
of this term across the U.S. South, and especially in Texas,
appear in the Dictionary of American Regional English
(DARE). We suspect that other consultants were reluctant
to name this politically incorrect form, since 24 persons
claimed to have no word at all for this universally known
childhood toy, and 29 others were content to offer only the
“acceptable” English options slingshot and beanie.
Finally, a sixty-six-year-old woman from southern
New Mexico (interview 326) offered without elaboration
the unique form mesquichuri. We assume this form derives
from “Mexicanshooter” and reflects the derogatory English
pronunciation Mescan for “Mexican.” The DARE does not
provide this term for ‘Slingshot’ but does give “Mescan”
and “Meskin” as pejorative terms common in Texas.
There are only 3 other items elicited in the NMCOSS
that show the archaic pronunciation of orthographic h:
‘Mushroom,’ ‘Tracks’ (footprints of a mouse in sand), and
‘Smoke.’ All 3 exhibit the trend toward the archaic pronun-
ciation (jongo, juellas, jumo) in Traditional Spanish and
toward the standard pronunciation (hongo, huellas, humo)
in Border Spanish. But consider the variation in frequen-
cies for the 4 variables shown in table 5-1.
The archaic pronunciation is the most common
response for ‘Slingshot’ (53% versus 14% for the standard
pronunciation), ‘Mushroom’ (46% versus 23%), and ‘Tracks’
(41% versus 27%). However, the responses for ‘Smoke’
strongly favor the standard pronunciation (69% versus just
29% for the archaic form). Map 5-11 for ‘Smoke’ shows how
greatly the standard humo has overwhelmed the archaic
jumo in the Traditional Spanish territory.
chapter five
 5-11. ‘Smoke’

Retentions 73
 Assuming that the standard pronunciation surfaces
in large part to avoid the stigmatized archaic form, why
should ‘Smoke’ be so much more susceptible to this sanc-
tion than the other three words? Apparently, we would
guess, because ‘Smoke’ is a high frequency word that
shows up often enough to raise the awareness of the alert
nonstandard speaker or to draw correction from the too-
secure standard speaker. ‘Slingshot,’ ‘Mushroom,’ and
‘Tracks,’ on the other hand, are much less likely to occur
in conversations with outsiders, in the media, in the class-
room, or other such more formal situations.
Another phonological archaism is the retention of
the b in certain forms of the imperfective (the past tense
used to represent ongoing actions or states) of -er and -ir
verbs. Generally in Spanish we find that the b deriving
from the Latin construction survives only in the imper-
fective forms of -ar verbs like trabajar (e.g., trabajaba ‘he
was working’) and the highly irregular verb ir (e.g., iba
‘he was going’). That b was dropped over the centuries
in all other verbs following the stressed theme vowel í;
for example, for the verb comer we find comía ‘he was
eating,’ not comiba, and for vivir we have vivía ‘he was
living,’ not viviba. In New Mexican Spanish and many
74
other nonstandard varieties, however, the archaic b is
retained where the preceding theme vowel i is absorbed
into a preceding vowel to form a diphthong. For instance,
in the following examples the standard variant has three
syllables while diphthongization reduces the nonstandard
variant to two syllables, preserving the archaic b.
Standard Nonstandard
(trisyllabic) (disyllabic)
caía (ca-í-a) ‘she was falling’ caiba (cai-ba)
traían (tra-í-an) ‘they were bringing’ traiban (trai-ban)
creía (cre-í-a) ‘I was believing’ creiba (crei-ba)
Other retentions of sounds from Old Spanish are not
subject to general rules and instead simply represent the
way a single word or single morpheme is pronounced.
Thus, the fact that mismo is still pronounced mesmo in
New Mexican Spanish is a fact related to that particular
word and does not relate to any general phonological rule.
Similarly, the use of archaic vide for ‘I see’ instead of now
standard vi is a morphological irregularity that applies
uniquely to that verb. These are facts about individual
forms, not facts about the system of sounds.
chapter five
 Chap ter 6
New Spanish in a New World
Maritime and Caribbean
Contributions to
New Mexican Spanish
• While a transplanted language always retains essen-
tial characteristics of its roots in the homeland, it also
tends to adapt to aspects of the new situations into which it
is embedded. Both the transplanting process and the new
social and cultural environment may have an impact on
the language. The Spanish of the Americas reflects these
two prominent features, which its speakers experienced in
that early formative period away from home.
On the one hand, the seafaring enterprise and its
occupational jargon permeated the experiences of those
forebears of American Spanish. Their point of departure
was the port city of Seville in southern Spain, and the long
voyage to the Americas included a stopover in the Canary
Islands. All those who came to the New World arrived
by spending a month or more on ships, and usually after
having spent months in the port area awaiting departure.
Many had made their livelihoods in Spain in occupations
related to ships and ports, and many continued those
activities in the New World. Furthermore, for the early
settlers, contact with the seafaring world was the bind-
ing force with the homeland. Practically all communica-
tion about the Old World and broader developments in
the New World came out of the mouths of sailors. As a
consequence, one of the distinctive features of American
Spanish in contrast with the Spanish of central Spain is
the incorporation of maritime vocabulary.
On the other hand, the initial experiences of Span-
iards in the New World took place on the already inhab-
ited islands of the Caribbean and adjacent coastal regions.
Interaction between bearers of different languages and
cultures almost always results in rather rapid culture
change. But linguistic change resulting from that contact
is often minimal except in the one area of language that
is closely tied to culture—vocabulary. Hundreds of years
of close contact with the Native American languages of
the Americas has had only negligible influence on the
grammatical structure of any American Spanish dialect
(see, e.g., Lipski 1994, 63–92). But of course, in words the
Spanish language has been tremendously impacted by
the New World experience. Exposure to new experiences
was mediated by the languages spoken by the new people
encountered. An immediate consequence was the incor-
poration of vocabulary borrowed from those languages.
Early borrowings from Native American languages
have become another distinguishing characteristic of
American Spanish.
75
 In the following two sections we discuss how these two
early influences—seafaring vocabulary and early native
loanwords—show up in New Mexican Spanish today.
Maritime Contributions
Some of the most commonly used vocabulary of New
World Spanish derives from maritime usage (a succinct
discussion of such usage can be found in Buesa and
Enguita 1992, 181–90). For example, while tirar is the
common verb for ‘pull’ in Spain, American dialects use
the term jalar (sometimes spelled and pronounced halar),
which aboard ship was used strictly for tugging on some-
thing (a sail, an oar) that would result in making the
boat move. It became the general word for ‘pull’ in New
Mexican Spanish, as shown in example 6-1:
(6-1) Si un caballo está más grande que el otro, tienes
que recortarle las cadenas pa’ que jalen iguales.
‘If one horse [on the wagon] is bigger than the
other one, you have to shorten its chains so that
they pull equally.’ (interview 41)
This verb has taken on extended meanings such as ‘haul,’
as illustrated in example 6-2:
(6-2) Iban a jalar flete a Dénvar. ‘They would go to
Denver to haul supplies [by oxcart on a three-
month trip].’ (interview 280)
The term flete in example 6-2 is also a maritime
word. It once was reserved strictly for the cargo of a ship,
but in the Americas it is used for any kind of freight or
cargo. And in New Mexican Spanish it has taken on the
general meaning of ‘supplies.’ Here, moreover, we find
derived forms such as fletero, used as a noun for ‘person
who hauls freight’ and as an adjective in, for example, tren
fletero ‘freight train’ and troca fletera ‘freight truck,’ that
is, a big semitruck.
The word ancón in Spanish generally refers to a bay,
cove, or inlet of the ocean. In New Mexican Spanish, this
maritime word can be used for those places on a lake, but
it has been extended to refer to a “recess or canyon in a
hill” (Cobos 2003), or even any flat land in hilly country,
as attested in example 6-3, uttered by a sixty-year-old man
living in Winston, New Mexico, a rugged area of western
Sierra County near the continental divide:
(6-3) Sembraban muncho maíz aquí . . . [en] todos
los terrenos que están ahi, todos los ancones que
76
hay. ‘They used to plant lots of corn here . . . [in]
all those lands you see there, all those flat areas
that there are.’ (interview 356)
As unlikely as it may at first seem, even the word
rancho—and its form as borrowed into English ranch—
likely has a maritime origin. The basic meanings of rancho
in the DRAE have to do with the food prepared for a group
(e.g., of workers or soldiers). Aboard ship, however, it refers
to the crew’s quarters. The varied meanings of rancho in
American Spanish seem to derive from this maritime
usage. In New Mexican Spanish, rancho refers to a rural
property used for raising crops or animals or both, that is,
covering the 2 English labels farm and ranch.
A maritime word that predominates almost every-
where in the Western Hemisphere is the verb amarrar
as the most general verb for ‘tie.’ Although amarrar is
commonly used in Spain, the form that dominates there
is atar. The CORDE, for example, contains 1,442 tokens of
the infinitival form atar, 83% of which occur in documents
from Spain. In contrast, it has only 211 cases of amarrar,
and only 37% are found in documents from Spain. In the
Americas, atar is widely used only in the eastern part of
southern South America, Argentina in particular, accord-
ing to the documentation in the CORDE.
Atar is a native Spanish word deriving from Latin
aptare. Amarrar, however, came into Spanish later; its
earliest attestation in the CORDE is for 1487. It is an old
borrowing from Dutch (via French according to the
DRAE), implicating its relationship too to the maritime
world. The DRAE specifically defines atar as the general
word for ‘tie’:
(6-4) unir, juntar o sujetar con ligaduras o nudos
‘unite, join, or fasten with ties or knots.’
Amarrar, on the other hand, is given the more restrictive
meaning of ‘tie down’ or ‘tie up’:
(6-5) atar y asegurar por medio de cuerdas,
maromas, cadenas, etc. ‘tie and secure by
means of cords, thick ropes, chains, etc.’
and specifically refers to the anchoring or tying down of
ships at docks.
In the NMCOSS, we elicited this verb in a neutral
context, in the very specific instance of a child tying the
shoelaces of his shoes. Map 6-1 shows that the seafaring
term amarrar is clearly the term of preference for ‘Tie
shoelaces’ throughout New Mexican Spanish. Nearly
chapter six
 6-1. ‘Tie shoelaces’

New Spanish in a New World 77

two-thirds (65%) of our 320 respondents gave this label
as their first choice (and another 11 offered a distorted
marrar, not mapped). Another 75 consultants (25%)
preferred abrochar (with again a distorted version by 5
persons, brochar, not mapped). Abrochar is the general
Spanish word for ‘fasten’ or ‘button up,’ but it is also
widely used to mean ‘Tie shoelaces’ (at least in the New
World, though not in the DRAE).
The Atlas lingüístico de México reveals that both terms
are also typical for ‘Tie shoelaces’ in our neighbor nation
(mapa 932). While amarrar is slightly favored overall in
Mexico, especially in the south, abrochar occurs promi-
nently in the northern half of the country. Map 6-1 shows
that it is in the extreme south of New Mexico closest to
northern Mexico that we find the strongest showing of
abrochar, with about a fifty-fifty split between the 2 forms.
In contrast, only 5 persons in the ALM survey and
just 3 of the NMCOSS consultants mentioned atar, the
form favored in Spain. Exposure to standard Spanish
appears to have played a significant role in the word
choice of the 3 NMCOSS consultants. One had taken
seven courses in Spanish, another had taken four courses,
and the third, while having had no formal instruction
in Spanish herself, had a daughter who was a graduate
student in Spanish. All 3 were able to read our bookish
reading exercise without difficulty. The maritime term
amarrar for ‘tie,’ then, is clearly the norm in New Mexican
Spanish as well as in Mexican Spanish.
A form that is commonly used in the Spanish of the
New World but is absent or uncommon in Spain is called
an Americanism. Another maritime usage that is gener-
ally considered an Americanism is the use of maroma
for ‘Somersault.’ A borrowing from Arabic having the
original meaning ‘twisted,’ maroma in Spain generally
refers to a thick rope made of fibers (twisted, of course)
of the sort commonly used on large sailing vessels—see
the use of maroma in the DRAE definition of amarrar
in example 6-5. Both the rope notion and the twisting
action seem to have contributed to the extended mari-
time meanings related to ‘acrobatics,’ ‘tightrope walking,’
and ‘somersaulting’ that occur broadly in the Spanish of
the Americas.
A picture of children turning somersaults yielded
varied responses containing the root word maroma,
referring sometimes to the act (maroma, maromas),
sometimes to the action (maromear, dar maromas, echar
maromas, hacer maromas), and sometimes to the actors
(maromeras and maromeros—see example 15-2). Together,
these variations of maroma account for fully 78% of the
NMCOSS responses and blanket the survey region so
78
sweepingly that map 6-2 reveals no geographical inter-
est. This form also happens to be the dominant term in
Mexico, and particularly so in the northern half of the
country, according to the ALM (mapa 813).
The ‘Somersault’ form that surfaces in second place
in New Mexican Spanish, with just 10% of responses, is a
nonproductive diminutive form, marometas (also offered
as the action dar, echar, or hacer marometas). Map 6-2
shows this label restricted to the southern half of the
region, south of Santa Fe. In Mexico as well, this word
occurs as a minority variant in peripheral areas, with 2
cases in Sonora on the northwest coast (though Mendoza
Guerrero 2002, 109 reports 12 mentions in neighboring
Sinaloa) and a few more in southern Mexico.
The third most common form in New Mexican
Spanish, amounting to only 11 first choices or just 3%,
is a borrowing from the Nahuatl language. The most
direct rendering from Nahuatl into Spanish is machin-
cuepa, from ma (combining form of ma(i)-tl) ‘hand, arm’
+ tzincuepa ‘change sides, turn over’). The ALM shows
machincuepa as well as several variations of this form (as
is typical of longer words, such as this one with four sylla-
bles), all occurring in southern Mexico, though Mendoza
Guerrero finds 2 cases in Sinaloa (2002, 109–10). The
direct rendering does not occur in the NMCOSS data,
but there are 11 variants of it. The most common variant
is machicuetas with 7 first choices (plus 8 other mentions);
the other forms that were offered are 2 cases of machucue-
tas and 1 case each of machuquetas and manchicuetas. The
western distribution of these forms is suggestive of other
cases like güíjalo for ‘Turkey,’ but again the numbers are
sufficiently small to inhibit speculation.
In sum, New Mexican Spanish is thoroughly aligned
with Mexican Spanish—and not the usage of Spain—
when it comes to a childhood activity such as turn-
ing somersaults. Not 1 of the NMCOSS consultants
offered the typical peninsular term volteretas and only 2
produced the other standard term piruetas (and similarly,
in the ALM there were only a handful of volteretas and no
cases of piruetas). Moreover, the label for this common-
place childhood activity comes readily to mind among
our consultants. Only 5 persons were not able to come
up with a term and just 3 had to resort to English somer-
sault, though 1 twenty-four-year-old woman displayed
her bilingual creativity to come up with somersacear!
Yet another maritime word that is commonly used
in New Mexican Spanish is chicote for the ‘Riding crop’
or ‘whip’ that a cowboy uses to control a horse or make it
move more quickly, and that a parent sometimes used for
disciplinary purposes:
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New Spanish in a New World 79

 (6-6) Esa crianza que teníamos antes, la teníanos
por el chicote, por el azote. ‘The rearing that we
got in those days, we got it by the whip, by the
lashing.’ (interview 219)
Although chicote was the preferred term of a slight
majority of the NMCOSS respondents (174 of 320, or
54%), another quarter (82 persons, 26%) offered the term
cuarta. Map 6-3 shows that both terms are distributed
widely across the region with no particular geographical
patterning. In fact, a number of consultants mentioned
both terms as equally appropriate labels for this item.
However, for some of the older speakers raised in
rural areas, there is a semantic difference between the
2 terms: the cuarta is specifically a short ‘Riding crop’
used by an equestrian while the chicote is a longer ‘whip’
used for example in driving a horse-driven buggy. But
the distinction appears to be dying out along with the
practice of horsemanship and other activities of rural life
that revolve around close attachment to the land. In fact,
nearly 1 in 10 of the respondents could offer no term at all
or knew only the English whip or crop.
In Mexico, too, according to the ALM, the strongly
preferred labels for ‘Riding crop’ are chicote and cuarta.
However, there the preferences are reversed, with about
twice as many people naming cuarta. Indeed, the DRAE
identifies cuarta with this meaning as being a distinc-
tively Mexican word. In contrast, the terms of preference
in Spain hardly occur in either area. Only 3 NMCOSS
consultants reported the variant látigo and another 3 the
variant azote. These 2 labels rarely occurred in the Mexico
survey as well. So New Mexican Spanish again reveals its
close ties to its immediate neighbor in its use of the mari-
time word chicote as well as the Mexican word cuarta.
In A dictionary of New Mexico and southern Colorado
Spanish (2003), Rubén Cobos considers chicote to be a
borrowing from the Nahuatl language of Mexico. This
ascription is presumably based on the observation that
so many words ending in -te in New Mexican Spanish
are indeed taken from Nahuatl, such as tecolote ‘Owl,’
elote ‘Ear of corn,’ zoquete ‘Mud,’ zacate ‘grass,’ and on
and on as we’ll see in the next chapter. But chicote is not
a Nahuatlism. According to the DRAE, it is a borrowing
of the French word chicot, meaning ‘stump’ (of a tree or
tooth). We see an extension of that meaning in the refer-
ence of chicote to ‘cigarette butt’ or colloquially ‘cigar’ in
Spain today, according to the DRAE. But its maritime
meaning is the end piece of a rope or a small length of
rope. As Lerner (1974) suggests, that maritime meaning
was further extended to the rope-like ‘Riding crop’ or
80
‘whip,’ a usage that is found in the Americas from New
Mexican Spanish to Argentine Spanish.
Caribbean Contributions
The first contact of Spaniards with Native Americans took
place in the Greater Antilles, in particular on the island of
Hispaniola (called La Española by Columbus), which today
comprises the two countries of Haiti and the Dominican
Republic. Columbus landed on Hispaniola on his first
voyage and he established the first Spanish colony there on
his second voyage in 1493. Important early contact with the
native inhabitants also took place in Cuba and Puerto Rico,
as well as in the Bahamas and Jamaica.
These Europeans did not at first even realize they
were on a new continent, so they assumed that what they
already knew could suffice linguistically: “Well, here we
are in India. Look at those Indians!” But they had not
discovered the western passage to India after all, and
almost everything they encountered was new to them.
The known would not suffice. It was only natural, then,
that they should borrow words to describe flora and
fauna, peoples and customs, foods and artifacts that they
had never before encountered or even imagined.
The most prominent of the initial lenders to the
American Spanish lexicon were the speakers of several
Arawakan and Carib languages in the West Indies. The
paucity of early documentation on these languages makes
it difficult to ascribe provenience of a form with certainty,
but it is generally believed that the principal contributors
were the Arawakan-speaking Taino Indians of Hispaniola.
Although the Taino population was decimated in a short
time because of disease and mistreatment, in the everyday
life of that early colony there was close contact between
the Spaniards and the natives, including intermarriage
and concubinage. A host of Taino loanwords are docu-
mented as occurring in the Spanish of Spain already in
the sixteenth century (see Buesa and Enguita 1992, 51–72
for a detailed treatment). Many of these words referred to
tropical phenomena (such as huracán ‘hurricane,’ hamaca
‘hammock,’ and the guanábana and mamey fruits) that
promptly became part of the Spanish language but of
course had little relevance in the New Mexico province.
Other borrowings such as maní ‘peanut’ and ají ‘chile
pepper’ became of general use in American Spanish, except
in northern Spanish America where the Nahuatl borrow-
ings cacahuate and chile, respectively, took over. Still other
Caribbean loanwords, however, were brought into our
survey area apparently by the earliest settlers, and they are
a prominent feature of Traditional Spanish today.
chapter six
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New Spanish in a New World 81

 One of the most inf luential and widely spread
borrowings from the Taino language—into Spanish and
far beyond—is maíz ‘Corn.’ This word is known and used
throughout the Spanish-speaking world, including by all
speakers of New Mexican Spanish. Most of the NMCOSS
consultants (62%) pronounced this word with a shift of
stress to the lower vowel a to produce a monosyllabic
form with a diphthong, maiz, a general phonological
process that often happens in colloquial Spanish every-
where. In English, of course, the Caribbean borrowing
was not adopted for ‘corn.’ Instead, American English has
narrowed the meaning of a good Anglo-Saxon word corn
that was once the general term for ‘grain,’ and the Taino
word came to be used for a special kind of grain, maize.
A pleasantly surprising borrowing from the so-called
Island Carib language is the word caribe itself, which is
the source of one name for the language as well as the
name of the distinct Carib language family of northern
South America. It is also, of course, the source for the
area and sea that we call the Caribbean. The term caribe
was incorporated into Spanish first as a name for Indians
of the region, but it soon came to mean ‘hostile, fero-
cious Indian’ and even ‘cannibal,’ a word derived from
the alternative forms of caribe—caniba and canibal (see
Buesa and Enguita 1992, 66; Durbin 1985, 325). But the
word caribe eventually came to mean simply ‘ferocious,’
referring to people or things. Thus, according to the
DRAE, it is the label for a biting ant in Puerto Rico and
the Dominican Republic and a name given to the pira-
nha fish in Venezuela and Colombia. In the Caribbean,
it also refers to particularly even ferociously hot peppers,
ají caribe.
Now, in the NMCOSS region, this borrowing is used
for reference to the beloved and often fiery red pepper sauce
known as chile caribe. Its cultural significance is captured
in the following quote from a sixty-four-year-old woman
from Pagosa Springs, Colorado (interview 201):
(6-7) Tenían carne adobada y había papas fritas,
huevos fritos, chile caribe y tortillas; ese era el
almuerzo siempre pa’ Crismes en la mañana.
‘They would have carne adovada, fried
potatoes, fried eggs, and chile caribe; that was
always the breakfast on Christmas morning.’
Note that here the ‘pepper’ term is the Nahuatlism chile
and not the Taino borrowing ají, which is the label gener-
ally preferred in the Americas outside the sphere of
Mexican influence. As far as we know, this is the sole use
of the term caribe in New Mexican Spanish.
82
Among the earliest loanwords from a Caribbean
language is canoa, a Taino word that originally referred
to a long, narrow boat carved from a tree trunk, a dug-
out. Columbus uses the term in a 1493 letter about his
first voyage:
(6-8) Ellos tienen [en] todas las islas muy muchas
canoas, a manera de fustas de remo. . . . Algunas
destas canoas he visto con setenta y ochenta
hombres en ella y cada uno con su remo. ‘They
have on all the islands many, many canoas, like
rowboats. . . . I have seen some of these canoas
with seventy and eighty men in it and each one
with an oar.’ (cited by Gútemberg 1984, 20; our
translation)
Canoa is also recorded as the only Native American word
in Antonio de Nebrija’s Spanish dictionary of 1493 (see
Maffla Bilbao 2003, 196–98). The CORDE documents its
use in Mexico already in 1525 and in Peru in 1527. Today
the word is used throughout the Spanish-speaking
world and has spread to many other languages, giving us
English canoe, for instance.
Canoa (sometimes realized as canoba) has taken on
a variety of meanings in Spanish, and indeed reference to
a watercraft is perhaps not its most common use in New
Mexican Spanish (as we’ll examine more carefully in
connection with map 6-5 for ‘Rain gutter’). Nevertheless,
a consideration of the labels for ‘Boat’ in the NMCOSS is
instructive with regard to the Taino borrowing and also
gives us a couple more examples of maritime words.
Map 6-4 displays the distributions of 4 of the labels
for ‘Boat’ that our consultants offered in response to an
ordinary small aluminum fishing boat with an outboard
motor and a man fishing on board. The most common
label by far is barco, representing 202 of the 329 responses
(61%, including 35 cases of the diminutive form barquito).
It shows up strongly throughout the survey region. But
where it is significant as the decisive norm is across a
great swath of central New Mexico, perhaps irradiating
out from Albuquerque.
More interesting for present purposes are the 3 other
terms. A total of 47 consultants (14%) preferred the label
lancha. Map 6-4 shows that the great majority represent
rural areas of Traditional Spanish. And these folks tend to
be elderly, too; half (24 persons) were over the age of sixty-
five. Thus, regardless of the decent number of responses,
this term seems to be a relic that is being overpowered by
the now favored barco. An intriguing coincidence is the
fact that 4 of the 5 respondents representing southern New
chapter six
 6-4. ‘Boat’

New Spanish in a New World 83

Mexico have at least 1 parent born in Mexico, suggesting
that lancha for ‘Boat’ has some currency also in Mexico,
though the ALM does not include the variable.
Lancha (like English launch) happens to be another
seafaring term. According to the DRAE, it is a borrowing
into Spanish (via Portuguese) from the Malay language
spoken in the area now represented by Malaysia and
Indonesia. It is documented in the CORDE for Spain
already in the early fifteenth century. The first colonizers
likely brought this maritime word into New Mexico.
For another 34 consultants (10%) the preferred label
for ‘Boat’ is chalupa, yet another seafaring term. Its distri-
bution across map 6-4 occurs exclusively in the far south
and far north of the NMCOSS area, a highly unusual
pattern. The CORDE documents the use of chalupa from
the sixteenth century, so it is possible that its occurrence
in the far north represents an early import into New
Mexico. The southern distribution, however, would seem
to reflect recent immigration from Mexico. In fact, nearly
half of those preferring this label (14 of the 34) reported
having a parent born in Mexico, indicating a prominence
of chalupa use in modern Mexican Spanish. Santamaría
(1959) certainly claims the form as a Mexicanism in its
meaning of ‘dugout’ as well as in its derived meaning
of a boat-shaped, taco-like snack now known around
the world due primarily to the multinational fast-food
marketing of Taco Bell.
The DRAE indicates that chalupa refers to several
kinds of small boats and reports it to be an early borrow-
ing (again via French) of a Dutch word for which sloop
is the cognate in English. This maritime word, whatever
its specific reference, occurs now with greater frequency
in the Americas than in Spain (and it is also widely
used in Latin America to refer to the electrical box that
houses the wires behind a wall outlet or switch). Though
Latin American documents account for only 44% of all
the words in the CREA, fully 74% of the occurrences of
chalupa are in American documents. Moreover, 17% of
the tokens come from Mexico (with another 20% from
Nicaragua). But even if the label may be thriving in
Mexico, it is languishing in the NMCOSS area in spite of
immigration; 18 of the 34 who prefer chalupa for ‘Boat’ are
above the age of sixty-five.
Turning to the fourth variant for ‘Boat’ provided in
map 6-4, we can see that just 8 of the NMCOSS consul-
tants preferred the Taino loanword canoa (including 3
pronunciations as canoba). These persons are dispersed
haphazardly around the region and 5 of the 8 are above
seventy years of age. Canoa is another relic on the way
out. Somewhat surprisingly, in this case too there is a
84
strong connection with Mexico: 3 of the 8 who preferred
canoa, and 6 of the 12 who even mentioned the term, have
a parent born in Mexico.
Again, the CREA shows that 77% of the tokens of
canoa are found in New World documents, with fully 20%
in Mexican documents even though Mexico accounts for
only 11% of that corpus. Santamaría (1959) documents
canoa as a more general word for ‘Boat’ in Mexico, with
chalupa having the more specific reference to a canoe-
like dugout made from a single log, though once more
we must point out that Santamaría’s work does not reflect
current usage.
Canoa for ‘Boat,’ then, is very little used in New
Mexican Spanish and appears to be a recent introduction
from Mexico. But the word canoa is more widely used
with other meanings derived from that original associa-
tion to something carved out of a log. Typically it refers
to things that were originally hollowed out from pieces
of wood such as troughs and irrigation channels, but its
use has been extended to refer to those artifacts made of
other materials. Cobos (2003) defines canoba (he does
not cite canoa) as “a long . . . crude trough cut from a log
. . . used for feeding farm animals,” and the ALEC (vol.
2, mapa 104) reports this to be the dominant term for a
food trough for pigs in Colombia. Our NMCOSS conver-
sational data shows it used to refer to a watering trough
for animals (consultants 185, 200, 223) and even as an old-
fashioned long metal tub used for bathing (consultant
239). And it is also used for the rain gutters on a house, as
attested in example 6-9:
(6-9) Mi casa así tiene canobas pa’ que salga l’ agua
cuando cae de la zotea. ‘My house has gutters
like this to carry off the rain as it falls from the
roof.’ (interview 154)
This last meaning, ‘Rain gutter,’ is one of the specifi-
cally elicited items in the NMCOSS. Almost a third of the
consultants (31%) could offer no response at all or only an
English word (gutter, drain) for this device that has little
tradition in a land of many flat roofs and not an overabun-
dance of rain. Another 29% responded with the standard
canal, which map 6-5 reveals to be widely distributed and
displaying no geographical patterning of interest.
The next most common response is that borrow-
ing from Taino, canoa. Of intriguing interest here is
that the 2 variants, canoa and canoba, have quite differ-
ent distributions. Canoba, with 34 responses, is charac-
teristic of Traditional Spanish and no doubt represents
a pronunciation retained from the earliest settlers. The
chapter six
 6-5. ‘Rain gutter’

New Spanish in a New World 85

standard pronunciation canoa appears to be Border
Spanish, though the small number of tokens (just 8)
makes it unwise to draw a firm conclusion. Nevertheless,
canoa with the meaning of ‘Rain gutter’ is sufficiently
commonplace to be listed in the DRAE for Costa Rica and
Chile, and it is also listed there as a general Americanism
with the meaning of a channel for carrying water.
Unfortunately, the Atlas lingüístico de México did not
include this variable. Santamaría (1959) lists the word
with the meaning of a small wood trough for carrying
water (as well as the boat meaning, of course) but does not
specifically mention the sense we’re concerned with.
Among the 26 other words offered in an attempt to
identify a ‘Rain gutter’ (e.g., aguacera, cañería, chorrera,
desagüe, drenaje, gotera, tubo, and so forth, most with
just 1 mention and none with more than 4), 2 merit some
mention even though we have not included them on the
map. A total of 21 consultants (7% of the total) proposed
the label canaleja, mostly persons along the Río Grande
between Albuquerque and Taos but with scattered other
mentions. There were also 9 preferences for cañute
(plus 1 canute), again widely dispersed but mostly in the
Traditional Spanish region.
The words for ‘Mosquito’ reveal an interesting inter-
play between a Caribbean borrowing and the influence of
two other languages, English and Nahuatl. The 4 major
variants that turned up in the NMCOSS are mosquito,
favored by 134 persons (40%), jején, the choice of 92 persons
(28%), moyote, the response of 58 persons (18%), and mosco,
the response of 27 persons (8%). In their dictionaries focus-
ing on Traditional Spanish, Cobos (2003) lists jején and
moyote as “Mosquito” and L. Trujillo (1983) adds mosco (as
well as the aberrant moisco). Neither includes mosquito,
presumably because of its perceived status as standard
Spanish. Alvar’s list also shows mosquito to be the domi-
nant form in the New Mexico–Colorado region, but he
collected only 3 jején, at least 6 zancudo, and no mosco
or moyote, though a southernmost informant apparently
mentioned the latter (2000, 281).
The use of the label jején for ‘Mosquito’ is generally
considered another early loanword from Taino (though
Santamaría 1959 asserts, without any supporting docu-
mentation, that it is of African origin, and others have
suggested a Mayan origin; see Maff la Bilbao 2003,
311–12). This form in Taino referred to a tiny gnat-like
biting insect, sometimes jocularly called a no-see-um
in English. The DRAE defines jején in this way, and that
original meaning is retained in many places. Santamaría,
for example, identifies it as a tiny kind of mosquito of
the tropical coast of Mexico. However, in Colombia
86
where mosquito surfaces as the dominant form, jején for
‘Mosquito’ turns up regularly across the nation (ALEC
vol. 2, mapa 178). It is of interest to note that a couple of
NMCOSS consultants claimed to differentiate a gnat-
like jején from the larger mosquito, but we suspect that
this claim is based on taking the word of outsiders who
attempted to correct the speech of the “rustic Manitos.”
The distribution in map 6-6 shows that jején is a
feature of Traditional Spanish. It represents the reten-
tion of a Caribbean word that was adopted by the first
Spaniards in the New World and that must have been
brought to New Mexico by the early settlers. At some
point during those first couple of centuries it became,
probably for all or most speakers of Traditional Spanish,
the general term for ‘Mosquito.’ The distinctiveness of this
word for Traditional Spanish is demonstrated by the fact
that not 1 respondent in the Mexico atlas survey (mapa
623) reported this variant for ‘Mosquito.’ However, 3 of
the 60 persons surveyed in Sinaloa by Mendoza Guerrero
(2002, 75–76) mentioned the jején label, though he seems
to believe that the reference was to something other than
a mosquito.
Map 6-6 indicates that jején is still prominent in
northern New Mexico and southern Colorado in spite
of stiff competition from the word mosquito. The latter
is the most frequently cited label across the region, and
it appears to be spreading throughout the NMCOSS
territory at the expense of the previously favored jején. It
might be assumed that the expansion of mosquito is due
to the fact that this form has been the standard Spanish
term since before the Spanish landed in the New World.
But it is most definitely not the standard in Mexico today.
While it was the choice of 40% in the NMCOSS, fewer
than 1 in 5 Mexicans appear to have reported this term
in the ALM.
Rather, the dominant form in Mexico—the response
of nearly two-thirds of those surveyed in the ALM—is
zancudo, which the DRAE labels an Americanism.
Zancudo is an augmentative form of the noun zanca ‘long,
thin leg.’ It appears to have developed as a truncated form
of an earlier mosquito zancudo ‘long-legged mosquito’
(cited in CORDE, for example, in the 1636 Spanish book
León prodigioso by Cosme Gómez de Tejada). Whatever
its origin, the Mexican standard has not been influential
in our survey area. Only 6 NMCOSS respondents cited
zancudo and they show no special distribution.
So what is contributing to the apparent increase in
the popularity of the mosquito form in New Mexico and
southern Colorado? Well, the English label for this insect
happens to be the same word borrowed from Spanish
chapter six
 6-6. ‘Mosquito’

New Spanish in a New World 87

 6-7. ‘Mosquito’ in Mexico
and spelled the same way, but with a different pronuncia-
tion, of course. The current prominence and expansion of
mosquito in the NMCOSS region is almost certainly due
to its near-identity with the English word, an influence
from English that falls short of direct borrowing.
The third variant, moyote, is pretty much confined
to the extreme southern part of the region. That distri-
bution pattern appears to result from the influence of
modern Mexican Spanish. In fact, the ALM (mapa 623)
documents moyote almost exclusively in the tier of two
Mexican states just south of New Mexico, Chihuahua
and Durango, as shown in map 6-7, our synthesis of the
ALM findings. Moyote is a borrowing from the Nahuatl
language of central Mexico (from Nahuatl moyo-tl). The
fact that it is now confined to northern Mexico and rare
in the traditional Aztec territory suggests that it is a dying
form in that country. And indeed it accounts for only 4%
of the more than 700 ALM responses, contrasting with
the 18% showing in the NMCOSS. Its status in Mexico vis-
à-vis New Mexico is reminiscent of the earlier discussion
of cócono for ‘Turkey.’ While the trendy innovations seem
to sweep out the old in Mexican Spanish, New Mexico
Spanish is not nearly as susceptible to those trends.
88
The final New Mexican Spanish variant for ‘Mosquito’
is mosco, the base form from which the diminutive
mosquito was long ago derived. The DRAE acknowl-
edges mosco as a variant of mosquito without any restric-
tive comment on usage. However, all 17 of the tokens of
mosco in the CREA are from the Americas, and the major-
ity of these are from Mexico, especially where the refer-
ence is clearly to a mosquito. In fact, mosco is the third
most frequently mentioned term in the ALM, following
mosquito by only about 4%. In New Mexican Spanish,
mosco occurs scattered across the territory, displaying no
particular regional pattern.
One of the most pervasive Caribbean borrowings in
New Mexican Spanish is the word nagua, which referred
to the long ankle-length skirt worn by Taino married
women, according to Buesa and Enguita (1992, 59). The
singular form is documented very early in Spanish,
although the plural naguas came along not much later
and the now very common enaguas later still. Enaguas
is by far the most common realization of this word
in both the CORDE and the CREA. Some form of this
loanword is now used widely for different kinds of skirt-
like garments. The DRAE, for example, includes nagua
chapter six
and enagua (both identified as being used mostly in the
plural) with the principal meaning of an undergarment, a
slip. It states that in Mexico enagua can have the meaning
of an outer garment, a skirt. The VARILEX atlas shows
widespread use of enagua(s) for both ‘Skirt’ and ‘Slip’
(their ‘underskirt’) in Spain and the Americas but reports
not a single case of nagua(s), no doubt due to its emphasis
on modern urban lexicon as reported by many investiga-
tors (which is the reason we don’t often cite this otherwise
valuable information source). The ALEC (vol. 4, mapa 34)
shows “(e)nagua(s)” (without further breakdown of the
specific forms) to be the most common term for ‘Slip’ in
Colombia, especially in the highlands, though there is not
a single case of this form on the map for ‘Skirt’ (vol. 4,
mapa 33). In New Mexican Spanish, this Taino borrowing
became the usual term for both the outer garment ‘Skirt’
and the inner garment ‘Slip.’
Let’s first examine the variable ‘Slip’ (see map 6-8),
the stimulus for which was a picture of a woman in a
full slip. The most common response to this stimulus is
some form of the Tainism—15 different forms, in fact. But
they are nondistinctive and entirely overlapping in their
geographical distributions. Together they account for fully
two-thirds (63%, 204 of 322) of the consultant first choices
to label ‘Slip.’ The 4 most frequently cited variants are
combined for display on this map: naguas (88 responses),
naguas de abajo (63 responses), nagua (32 responses), and
nagua de abajo (21 responses). It is quite obvious on map
6-8 that these uses of the Taino borrowing characterize
the Traditional Spanish dialect. In contrast, the variant
more typical of Border Spanish is fondo, but only 14% of
the consultants offered this label. Another 11% gave only
an English response or no response at all.
The Traditional Spanish label for ‘Slip’ was realized in
many different ways beyond the 4 previously mentioned.
In the first place, there were only 2 cases of enagua, 1 in
the singular and 1 in the plural. The nagua base is the real-
ization in New Mexican Spanish. Moreover, the plural
form is heavily favored by a margin of 3 to 1; there were
151 preferences for naguas versus just 53 for nagua. Only
2 consultants preferred the diminutive nagüitas. In addi-
tion, the simple, unmodified form (singular or plural)
was dominant, representing 120 tokens, while 84 persons
added the descriptive modifier de abajo ‘under’ (and in 2
cases de interior ‘inner’), presumably to make explicit the
difference from ‘Skirt.’ Finally, 6 consultants added entera
or larga to describe this full-length slip.
The contrast with Mexico in this labeling for ‘Slip’ is
impressive. We might well expect the Border Spanish form
New Spanish in a New World
in map 6-8 to be the norm in Mexico, and this is indeed
the case. Fondo (often given as medio fondo) is the over-
whelmingly preferred term for ‘Slip’ according to the ALM
(mapa 906). There were only 29 responses of the Taino
loanword in that study, and half of these were the enagua
variant. Moreover, only 2 of the responses used the plural
form. Mendoza Guerrero (2002, 126–27) reports not a
single instance of (e)nagua(s) in the northwestern state of
Sinaloa. We see that New Mexican Spanish is sometimes
very different from Mexican Spanish in the incorporation
and retention of Caribbean borrowings.
Map 6-9 displays the responses for the variable
‘Skirt’ in New Mexican Spanish. Again we can see that
the Caribbean loanword tends to be associated with
Traditional Spanish while the standard Spanish form
falda is associated with Border Spanish. The boundar-
ies between the 2 labels are pretty blurred, however. The
Caribbean word shows up in the south and the stan-
dard word has penetrated smartly across the Traditional
Spanish region.
The Taino borrowing in its various forms is almost
as strongly preferred for ‘Skirt’ (59% of the 325 respon-
dents) as it is for ‘Slip’ (68%). Pedrero (2002, 55, 59) and
Alvar (2000, 206–7) also show the prominence of these
terms in New Mexico and southern Colorado, and that
finding is quite distinct from the other three states of
their sample. Again, the enagua(s) variant is rare in the
NMCOSS results, just 4 cases in the singular and 1 in the
plural; they are not included on map 6-9 although they
all occur in the Traditional Spanish area. As in the case
of ‘Slip,’ the plural variant naguas (134 cases) for ‘Skirt’ is
heavily favored over the singular nagua (just 54 cases).
And again, the 2 variants are combined on the map since
their distributions are parallel.
Naguas was used for the skirts of native women by
the first Spanish explorers in the Southwest. In his 1539
Relación describing his expedition to the Seven Cities of
Cíbola, Fray Marcos de Niza notes (Craddock 1999, 88):
(6-10) [L]as mugeres [trayan] las mismas turquesas
en las narizes y orejas y muy buenas naguas y
camjsas ‘[T]he women [were wearing] the same
turquoise in their noses and ears and very nice
skirts and shirts.’ (our translation)
It is also documented in the 1602 testimony of soldiers
of the New Mexico colony who accompanied Juan de
Oñate in the exploration of the eastern plains (Craddock
2002, 105):
89
 6-8. ‘Slip’

90 chapter six
 6-9. ‘Skirt’

New Spanish in a New World 91

 (6-11) [L]as mujeres todas traen mantas de algodon
gruesas pintadas y las mas dellas traen dos,
la vna que les sirve de naguas o saya y la otra
que les cubre el cuerpo ‘[A]ll the women wear
multi-colored thick cotton blankets and most
of them wear two, one that serves as a skirt or
petticoat and another that covers the body.’
(our translation)
Such early usage must have been the basis for the
extension of the reference of naguas to ‘Skirt’ in general
from the very beginning in the New Mexico colony,
resulting in today’s use as in example 6-12:
(6-12) Más antes cuando trabajaba no usaba casi
pantalones, no más naguas y túnicos. ‘Earlier
when I used to work I almost never wore pants,
only skirts and dresses.’ (interview 25)
This historically authentic meaning was broadened,
presumably subsequently, to include any female garment
hanging down from the waist, whether skirt or slip.
Turning to the other variant, we observe that a third
(33%) of the NMCOSS consultants preferred the standard
falda for ‘Skirt.’ But we just saw that the standard fondo
occurs as the term for ‘Slip’ among only 14% of the consul-
tants. Why should there be this difference in the spread
of a standard variant into New Mexican Spanish? A first
observation is that ‘Slip’ falls into the clothing category
92
of literally “unmentionables” for many Hispanics in this
region. Inhalations of surprise and indications of embar-
rassment are often audible in the recordings when the
page is turned to the pictures of underwear. Indeed, 10%
of our consultants could not give, or perhaps refused to
give, a word for ‘Slip,’ but only 3% failed to respond to
‘Skirt.’ Perhaps more important, external clothing is often
a topic in Spanish textbooks and Spanish classrooms
while underwear is generally avoided, and we will see
later (chapter 15) that the use of falda is strongly associ-
ated with education and the formal study of Spanish.
Need, influence, and opportunity conspired to make
three Native American languages the major contribu-
tors to the lexicon of New World Spanish: the Arawakan
language Taino at the initial point of entry, the Quechua
language of the Inca empire along the Andes Mountains
of South America, and the Nahuatl language of the Aztec
civilization of central Mexico (see Buesa and Enguita
1992, 35; Penny 1991, 18–19). As we have seen, Taino
provided the earliest gifts to New Mexican Spanish. The
Quechua influence began only after the Spanish invasion
of the Inca Empire in 1532, and communication connec-
tions over such a distance were too indirect to impact New
Mexican Spanish except for a few basic cultural contri-
butions such as papa ‘potato’ and carpa ‘tent.’ It was the
language contact in the interior of Mexico that had the
direct link that produced the greatest impact of a Native
American language on the Spanish variety that survives
today in New Mexico and southern Colorado.
chapter six
 Chap ter 7
Nahuatlisms
The Mexican Roots of
New Mexican Spanish
• The Spaniards who invaded Mexico faced expe-
riences similar to those faced twenty-five years
earlier on the island of Hispaniola. Again, there were
realities that were not European realities, and it immedi-
ately became essential to understand the new phenomena
and communicate with others about them. New realities
in foods, animals, plants, birds, cultural artifacts, and
many other areas required new lexicon, whether to be
created out of existing Spanish resources or borrowed
from other languages.
When in 1519 Hernán Cortés and his band of four
hundred or so soldiers reached the highlands where
Mexico City now stands, he found himself in the midst of
a dynamic, vibrant, sophisticated people numbering in
the millions and living in large urban centers. The Aztecs
had become the most powerful of a number of Mexican
Indian civilizations and had imposed their will through-
out much of central Mexico. Their language, Nahuatl, was
the dominant Native American language of the region at
that time, representing the political and economic power
of the Aztecs. We could anticipate, therefore, that its
influence on Spanish would be important.
Throughout the early colonial period in Mexico, the
Spaniards’ interaction with this new language was inti-
mate, particularly so given the frequency of intermar-
riage and concubinage due to the paucity of Spanish
women. Moreover, Nahuatl was immediately adopted by
the Spaniards as a lingua franca for communication with
other tribes. The priests were especially strong promot-
ers of Nahuatl for purposes of proselytization (Moreno
de Alba 1988, 45); to support their effort they developed
magnificent descriptions of the language. Fray Andrés
de Olmos produced the first grammar of Nahuatl in
1547, only fifty-five years after Nebrija’s first grammar of
Spanish (1492), and Fray Alonso de Molina produced his
fabulous Nahuatl dictionary in 1571. The titles of these
works—Arte de la lengua mexicana and Vocabulario
en lengua castellana y mexicana, respectively—often
confuse the unfamiliar person scanning the library
shelves, unaware that in colonial times the Nahuatl or
Aztec language was referred to as mexicano.
There are many dialects of Nahuatl, but the most
influential was the variety spoken in the valley at the
center of the Aztec empire where Mexico City is now
93
located. This “Classical Nahuatl” was the subject of the
earliest grammars and dictionaries and was presumably
the model for most early borrowings into Spanish. We
use this dialect as the source for the Nahuatl forms and
meanings cited in this book. We rely on its orthographic
representation as given in Karttunen (1983) except that
we eliminate the parentheses placed around vowels that
drop in some derived forms and we leave off the macron
over vowels that Karttunen uses to indicate vowel length.
We do, however, maintain the hyphen preceding the
so-called absolutive suffixes (e.g., moyo-tl) even though
these suffixes usually form an inherent part of the word as
borrowed into Spanish (thus, moyote ‘Mosquito’). We also
occasionally turn to Siméon (1977) and Molina (1571) for
supplementary information on Nahuatl vocabulary.
It bears stressing from the outset that the Nahuatl
language has had no influence whatsoever on the gram-
matical structure of the Spanish of either Mexico (see
Lope Blanch 1972c) or New Mexico. A very modest influ-
ence in the phonological structure may be discerned (see
Lope Blanch 1972b for a more detailed discussion). Many
speakers of Mexican Spanish, for instance, make use of
two “non-Spanish” phonological units that have been
retained in a few Nahuatl loanwords. First, the /tl/ clus-
ter occurs in words such as tlapalería ‘hardware store’
(derived from Nahuatl tlapal-li ‘paint, dye, ink’) and tlac-
uache ‘opossum’ (Nahuatl tlacuatzin). Second, the pala-
tal fricative phoneme /š/ as in English shoe, but generally
spelled with x in Mexico, occurs in borrowings such as
xocoyote ‘youngest child’ (Nahuatl xocoyo-tl) and nixta-
mal ‘hominy, cooked dried corn’ (Nahuatl nextamal-li).
Most loanwords that contained these sounds in Nahuatl,
however, have been fully integrated into the Spanish
phonological system (as will become apparent in exam-
ples cited throughout this chapter).
More important for our direct concerns, any
phonological influence of Nahuatl appears to be almost
completely absent in New Mexican Spanish today. Thus,
of the examples with /tl/ just mentioned, tlapalería and
tlacuache are not used here (although there is a dance
called tacuache that may be derived from the latter). In
the NMCOSS, we elicited no words that were pronounced
with /tl/. Cobos (2003) often includes words from docu-
ments of the colonial period, and that fact may account
for his listing of 2 Nahuatlisms with an initial /tl/: tlaco
‘a money term’ (for which he gives Nahuatl tlacocohua-
lony as the source; Molina [1571] gives tlacocoualoni for
‘money’) and tlazole ‘trash’ (Nahuatl tlahzol-li). However,
Cobos also lists without explicit cross-reference the inte-
grated variants claco and tazol. In addition, he includes
94
1 Nahuatlism with a medial and final /tl/, metlacahuitl
‘pole for hanging skins to dry’ (for which he ascribes a
Nahuatl source of the same form). If some speakers of
New Mexican today still use—or have ever even heard
of—these words with /tl/, they are exceedingly rare.
As for /š/, the word xocoyote is known and used by
few speakers of New Mexican Spanish. For ‘Baby of the
family’ in our survey, 7 persons mentioned a variant of
this Nahuatlism: 3 chocoyote, 3 socoyote, and just 1 shocoy-
ote. But the consultant did not produce this 1 /š/ response
spontaneously; rather, he was prompted by the inter-
viewer and then accepted shocoyote as a coequal choice
alongside his preferred ñoño. All 3 of these variants—
chocoyote, socoyote, and shocoyote—occur in Mexico
(ALM mapa 947), with socoyote being the most common
form in the northern part of Mexico. Incidentally, it is
the truncated coyote that is the most common form of
this Nahuatlism for ‘Baby of the family’ in New Mexican
Spanish, though still with only 13 responses, as well as in
northern Mexico.
Concerning the other /š/ word mentioned, nixta-
mal, we have only heard it pronounced nistamal or with
the x pronounced as /ks/ according to the normal spell-
ing conventions of modern Spanish. Cobos (2003) does
not include any xocoyote variant and he gives no indica-
tion of the pronunciation of nixtamal. He cites 3 other
Nahuatlisms with the initial palatal sound, but reports all
3 with both fricative sh and affricate ch listings: shiguata/
chiguata ‘woman’ (Nahuatl cihua-tl), shilote/chilote
‘tender ear of corn’ (Nahuatl xilo-tl), and shocoque/choc-
oque ‘sour, spoiled’ (Nahuatl xococ). He also includes 1
syllable-final case, tapushque/tepuzque ‘pile’ (for which
he ascribes a Nahuatl tepuzqui source). Like the Nahuatl
/tl/, and as demonstrated in the ‘Baby of the family’ find-
ings, the Nahuatl phoneme /š/ has essentially disap-
peared from New Mexican Spanish, and the sound [š] is
now heard only in English borrowings such as shainear
‘polish, shine’ and as a phonetic variant of /č/ for some
speakers (e.g., ocho varying with osho ‘eight’).
The outstanding inf luence of one language on
another, in all language contact situations, is in the
vocabulary. The contact of Spanish and Nahuatl resulted
in extensive borrowing of words in both directions. The
incorporation of Nahuatl lexical items into Spanish
follows from the special sociocultural context in which
the Spanish conquerors found themselves upon arrival in
Mexico in 1519 and during the subsequent colonial years
of daily life involving the two languages. The result is
that today probably the most identifiable characteristic of
Mexican Spanish is the existence of so many Nahuatlisms.
chapter seven
Their prominence led one Mexican language and folklore
scholar to proclaim catastrophically:
(7-1) Si desaparecieran del lenguaje español que
hablamos los mexicanos, todas las voces . . .
que tienen su origen en el idioma náhuatl . . . se
produciría un caos verdaderamente horrible.
‘If all the words . . . that have their origin in the
Nahuatl language . . . were to disappear from the
Spanish language we Mexicans speak, it would
produce a truly horrible chaos.’ (Rubio 1937,
xviii–xix; also cited in Lope Blanch 1979, 14–15)
However, these Nahuatl loanwords are not so perva-
sive in Mexican speech as such people may think. Lope
Blanch (1979, 29) has determined that in a spoken and
written corpus of Mexico City Spanish containing nearly
5 million words, Native American loanwords (excluding
names of persons and places) amount to less than one-
tenth of 1% of the total words. Furthermore, those 3,380
loanword tokens were found to represent only 312 differ-
ent words, and just 237 root words (1979, 33), mostly but
not exclusively Nahuatl in origin. Moreover, when those
237 forms plus 50 others widely known to be Nahuatlisms
were submitted to a sample of 100 Mexico City natives,
only 217 words (167 roots) were identified by at least half of
the subjects (34). How significant is that kind of influence?
Several hundred words are of little import in the average
human lexical inventory of more than 10,000 words. As
Lope Blanch observes (49), the loss of these Nahuatlisms
would be unlikely to produce chaos.
Naturally, the Spanish that was brought from Mexico
into the U.S. Southwest contains many words that derive
from the Nahuatl language. Emiliano, for example,
lists some 130 basic (that is, nonderived) Nahuatlisms
“used commonly by Chicanos” (1976, 96). Smead and
Clegg (1990) report finding at least 253 Nahuatlisms in
the Galván and Teschner dictionary (1977). For New
Mexican Spanish, Cobos (2003) specifically identifies
just over 100 basic words as having a Nahuatl origin, but
that dictionary includes several other items that in fact
are Nahuatlisms. Though all three studies over-identify
the number of words of Nahuatl origin and cite forms
that are not in everyday use in our region, the impor-
tance of the Nahuatl contribution and the unity it reveals
between Mexican and New Mexican Spanish should not
be underestimated.
Some Nahuatlisms are practically the only labels
used throughout our survey area: tecolote (from Nahuatl
tecolo-tl) for ‘Owl’ and zacate (from Nahuatl zaca-tl) for
Nahuatlisms
‘grass,’ for example. Others are the dominant form among
alternatives, for example, zoquete (Nahuatl zoqui-tl)
versus barro for ‘Mud’ and cajete (Nahuatl caxi-tl) versus
tina for ‘Tub.’ Others are minority variants, for example,
moyote (Nahuatl moyo-tl) versus jején or mosquito for
‘Mosquito’ (see map 6-6 in the preceding chapter). Still
others are relic forms, such as the use of comal (Nahuatl
comal-li) for ‘Skillet,’ a usage that will be discussed later
as an alteration of meaning. Moreover, some Nahuatl
borrowings are in competition with each other. A good
example is the label for ‘Turkey’ treated in chapter 3, with
2 basic forms supposedly borrowed from Nahuatl: guajo-
lote and cócono.
As all these examples illustrate, the vast majority of
Nahuatlisms are nouns. Only 2 verbs borrowed directly
from Nahuatl verbs are common in New Mexican Spanish
and both are now used primarily in reference to the gath-
ering of crops: piscar (from Nahuatl pixca ‘harvest corn or
wheat’) and pepenar (from Nahuatl pehpena ‘pick, choose,
gather, collect, glean’). Piscar in New Mexican Spanish
is more frequently realized as pisquear, a back-forma-
tion from the noun pisca ‘harvest,’ and both forms are
used only with the meaning ‘harvest, pick crops,’ though
what is harvested can be corn, potatoes, beans, and so on.
Pepenar, on the other hand, often also means ‘harvest,
pick crops’ (illustrated in example 7-2) but retains a
broader meaning of ‘gather’ and has been extended to
mean ‘pick up (a person), give a ride’ (example 7-3) and
still other senses of ‘pick up’ in English (example 7-4):
(7-2) Ellos pepenaban la papa. Antonces todo
pepenaban por mano. ‘They would dig
potatoes. In those days they’d harvest
everything by hand.’ (interview 46)
(7-3) Yo lo pepené después de que él vino de darle la
bienvenida al Papa. ‘I picked him up after he
came from welcoming the Pope.’ (interview 248)
(7-4) Pronto pepenamos las palabras en inglés. ‘We
pick up English words quickly.’ (interview 224)
Many of the Nahuatlisms were brought in by the first
Spanish-speaking colonizers. After all, every one of the
early settlers in el Nuevo México came up from “Old”
Mexico. The very first colonists of 1598 brought with them
a variety of Spanish that had already passed three-quar-
ters of a century in Mexico and in which many Nahuatl
loanwords had become firmly established. However,
Nahuatlisms have been entering New Mexican Spanish
for four centuries, even though there has been, of course,
no direct contact between Nahuatl and the Spanish of
95
New Mexico and southern Colorado. (We are obliged
to treat with caution facile interpretations of the Aztec
myth of the Aztlán homeland and particularly the fanci-
ful attributions of direct Nahuatl naming of places such
as Aztec, New Mexico, Montezuma County, Colorado,
and the Analco barrio of Santa Fe.) Rather, the continu-
ous exposure to Nahuatlisms has been the indirect result
of 500 years of Mexican Spanish contact with Nahuatl
and 400 years of New Mexican Spanish contact with
Mexican Spanish. The latter contact, sustained but hardly
intimate for the first three centuries, became particularly
pronounced in the twentieth century. The changes engen-
dered by all these contacts are reflected in the lexicon of
New Mexican Spanish today.
Some Nahuatlisms arrived early to the New Mexico–
southern Colorado area and others arrived much later.
The probable time of entrance of a particular word can be
extrapolated from its current spatial distribution in the
NMCOSS region. Those Nahuatlisms that occur exclu-
sively in the Border Spanish areas can be assumed to be
rather late arrivals. Those that are firmly established in
Traditional Spanish, whether or not they also occur in
Border Spanish, can be assumed to be earlier arrivals.
In this chapter, we will examine those Aztec loanwords
that were probably brought up from New Spain during
the colonial period and that are now, therefore, charac-
teristic features of Traditional Spanish. Chapters 11 and 15
will include consideration of other Nahuatlisms that were
introduced over the past 150 years or so.
The early introduction of Nahuatlisms into New
Mexico is associated with colonization on the northern
frontier of New Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. There were two key episodes in this early settle-
ment. The first was the entrance of the original colonists
in 1598. A century later, in 1693, 13 years after the expulsion
of the Hispanics by the Pueblo Revolt, a second wave of
settlers from Mexico joined with some of the original colo-
nists to repopulate the New Mexico colony. We can assume
that the new settlers, speakers of late seventeenth-century
Mexican Spanish, introduced some new Nahuatlisms. No
doubt they also employed many of the same Nahuatlisms
as the first colonists and thus strengthened their use.
The persistence of early Nahuatlisms in New Mexican
Spanish has varied in three main ways, as we previously
observed in Bills and Vigil (2000): (1) some words have
been retained unchanged up to the present, (2) others
have undergone alterations in form or meaning, and (3)
still others have suffered a reduction in use over time. We
consider each of these developments separately in the
following sections.
96
Retentions
Many Nahuatlisms continue to be used with more or
less the same general meaning they had for the early
borrowers. A sampling of some of the most common
includes atole ‘gruel made from corn’ (Nahuatl atol-li),
cacahuate ‘Peanut’ (Nahuatl cacahua-tl), capulín ‘choke-
cherry’ (Nahuatl capol-in), chiche ‘nipple’ (Nahuatl
chichi ‘to suckle,’ chichihual-li ‘breast, teat’), chile ‘chile
pepper’ (Nahuatl chil-li), chocolate ‘chocolate’ (Nahuatl
chocola-tl), coyote ‘coyote (the canid)’ (Nahuatl coyo-tl),
elote ‘Ear of corn’ (Nahuatl elo-tl), posole ‘hominy stew
with chile and meat’ (Nahuatl pozol-li), tamal ‘tamale’
(Nahuatl tamal-li), zacate ‘grass’ (Nahuatl zaca-tl), and
zoquete ‘Mud’ (Nahuatl zoqui-tl). These words were
incorporated into Spanish early in the colonial period.
There are 2 of these words in the following excerpt
from a priest’s letter to Emperor Carlos V in 1550 detail-
ing the difficulties of the local Indians (Company 1994,
130); notice that the writer displays no need to clarify the
meanings of the 2 Nahuatlisms:
(7-5) Y los q[ue] algo tienen alcançan tan poco
q[ue] no se allará entre mjll uno q[ue] pueda
vestir paño, nj comer sino tortillas y chile y un
poco de atule. ‘And for those who have a little
something it amounts to so little that you won’t
find in a thousand persons even one who can
dress properly or eat anything but tortillas and
chile and a little atole.’ (our translation)
All the Nahuatlisms cited in the previous paragraph
are still in widespread use today, in both New Mexican
Spanish and Mexican Spanish. As just one example of the
continuing popularity of such loanwords in the NMCOSS
region, we find that zoquete is the label for ‘Mud’ preferred
by fully 89% of our consultants.
Another prominent example of this type of strong
maintenance and possibly even expansion is the use of
chapulín for ‘Grasshopper’ (from Nahuatl chapol-in).
The ALM did not include this item, but the Nahuatlism
is known to be widely used in Mexico and through-
out Central America. The historical corpus CORDE,
for example, includes just 20 cases of singular chapulín
and plural chapulines and all occur only in Mexican
and Central American documents. Similarly, the recent
corpus CREA contains 36 cases of chapulín and chapu-
lines, 30 of which are in Mexican documents and only 1 in
a Spanish document. This Nahuatlism is 1 of the 74 Native
American loanwords that Lope Blanch (1979, 35) found to
be familiar to at least 99 out of 100 Mexico City natives.
chapter seven
 Chapulín for ‘Grasshopper’ is equally well-known to
speakers of New Mexican Spanish. Map 7-1 shows how
comprehensively this form covers the NMCOSS terri-
tory. In fact, fully 95% of our consultants provided this
label, and not a single other viable term was offered. The
other 5% of responses came from consultants having
limited fluency in Spanish: 7 persons claimed to have no
word, another 7 offered only the English term, 2 gave a
distortion of chapulín (chupulín and sapulín), 1 labeled
it simply gusano ‘worm,’ and 1 young woman (inter-
view 181) creatively translated from English to give us
zacatebrincador.
Now, the grasshopper is not a New World phenom-
enon. Spaniards were quite familiar with both the grass-
hopper (saltamontes) and the locust (langosta) before their
arrival in the Americas. While the adoption of loanwords
to label new entities such as turkeys and coyotes is to be
expected, it is surprising to see this Nahuatl borrowing
so strongly displace an existing native Spanish word. But
surprising or not, chapulín certainly has become a common
term for the creature from Colombia to New Mexico.
Notice that neither of the 2 standard Spanish terms
showed up as a preference in the NMCOSS. However, 1
woman (interview 150), a high school Spanish teacher
who had taken thirteen courses of formal Spanish,
mentioned that saltamontes was a possibility though
she said she would normally use chapulín. And another
woman (interview 53), a middle school Spanish teacher
who had taken seven Spanish courses, offered as a second
option brincamontes, an interesting reach toward the
standard but using the locally preferred word for ‘Jump’
brincar rather than saltar. The rarity of saltar in New
Mexican Spanish is demonstrated by the fact that only
3 consultants used this word for ‘Jump’ to describe the
childhood game of jump rope.
Another loanword, cuates (from Nahuatl coa-tl) for
‘Twins,’ has also strongly displaced the native Spanish
words in the areas of Mexican influence. Again, one might
wonder why such an ordinary term should be borrowed.
A possible major reason seems fairly clear. Many wives
of Spanish-speaking men in the early colonial days of
Central Mexico were Aztec women and speakers of
Nahuatl, and these women should have been influen-
tial in assigning a label to such a special phenomenon of
motherhood as twins.
In addition, the Nahuatl coatl had other meanings
that may have made this a culturally salient word. A prom-
inent other meaning is ‘snake,’ as used in the compound
word for the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl ‘plumed serpent’ or
the goddess Cihuacoatl ‘snake woman.’ It may be that there
Nahuatlisms
was no relationship between the ‘twin’ and ‘snake’ mean-
ings, a simple case of homonymy like English fan (‘enthu-
siastic admirer or supporter’ and ‘device to move air’). Or
possibly the meanings were associated in Aztec beliefs, as
Karttunen (1983, 36) and others have speculated.
Yet another original Nahuatl meaning has to do
more abstractly with notions of reciprocity and commu-
nality, and this meaning does indeed seem to tie in with
‘twins.’ This connotation seems to have been carried over
into Spanish in the common use of cuate to also mean
‘close friend, pal,’ in both nominal and adjectival senses
as attested in the following two NMCOSS examples:
(7-6) Él tenía unos cuates allá. ‘He had some friends
over there.’ (232)
(7-7) Oh sí, muy cuatas éranos yo y ella. ‘Oh yes, she
and I were very good friends.’ (274)
This last example also illustrates the adaptation of the
borrowing to Spanish morphology for representation of
specific gender; for most speakers, a female pair of twins
or good friends are cuatas.
Whatever the reason or reasons for undermining
a preexisting term, the Nahuatlism cuate is rampant in
the Mexican influence sphere. It is by far the most widely
used label from Arizona to Texas, according to Pedrero
(2002, 121–22), absent only in the Isleño Spanish of
Louisiana that results primarily from immigration from
the Canary Islands. The DRAE indicates that the label
occurs in Mexico and two other areas of Mexican influ-
ence, Guatemala and Honduras. It is noteworthy that a
little farther south not a single occurrence of cuates for
‘Twins’ surfaces in the atlas for Colombia (ALEC vol. 3,
mapa 59), a country in which hardly any loanwords from
Nahuatl are used.
Map 7-2 shows the dominance of the Nahuatl-derived
term in New Mexican Spanish, where cuates is the term for
‘Twins’ preferred by 290 of the 333 consultants (87%) from
whom a label was elicited. Only 25 persons (8%) showed a
preference for the standard label, gemelos, which in Mexico
is as widespread and prominent as cuates according to the
ALM. Map 7-2 indicates that there is some association of
gemelos with Border Spanish. But it is also clearly associ-
ated with exposure to standard Spanish. For example, 12 of
the 25 had taken at least two courses in Spanish and 14 of
the 25 had some college education. Significantly, however,
12 of the 25 who preferred gemelos explicitly offered cuates
as a coequal choice. Moreover, another 8 persons offered
distortions of the standard term (gemeles, gemenes, gime-
los, megelos), suggesting a less than solid familiarity with
97
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98 chapter seven
a term they may have learned about through exposure to
standard Spanish.
Not a single person gave the other standard Spanish
term mellizos, and just 1 person even mentioned it as a
possibility. This consultant, a young man from the far-
southern town of Anthony on the Texas border whose
parents were both natives of Mexico, volunteered the
following (perhaps idiosyncratic) explanation of the
difference between mellizos and cuates:
(7-8) Si son idénticos, son cuates, si no son idénticos
son mellizos. ‘If they’re identical, they’re
cuates, if they’re not identical, they’re mellizos.’
(interview 130)
Another Nahuatlism that thoroughly dominates the
NMCOSS landscape is the word for ‘Owl,’ shown in map
7-3. Tecolote, from tecolo-tl in Nahuatl (in which language
it also means ‘louse’), is the label selected by 286 of our
consultants, 83% of those who were asked to identify this
bird. There were 6 other persons who offered the close
variant ticolote. The standard Spanish term lechuza was
the preference of just 27 persons (8%). Map 7-3 indicates
that this standard variant shows up mostly in Border
Spanish areas, but remains very much the minority
option even there. The other standard option buho (often
also spelled búho) was proffered by only 1 person, consul-
tant 53, the middle school Spanish teacher again.
Education, however, doesn’t seem to play a signif-
icant role in the label choices for this bird because it is
so deeply embedded in Hispanic culture and folklore
and not just the name for a bird. Si el tecolote canta el
indio muere (‘if an owl cries out an Indian dies’) goes the
saying in Mexico (Rubio 1937, 418). As in much of the rest
of the Spanish-speaking world, the relationship between
owls and witches always lurks near the surface. We may
illustrate this relationship with the following report by
a seventy-five-year-old woman from Cleveland, New
Mexico (interview 215):
(7-9) Tenía a mi abuelita allá, muy viejita. Y tenía
un tío y una tía que vivían con ella. Nunca
se habían casado pero vivían juntos todos. Y
me platicaban que una noche habían ido al
baile. Y cuando vinieron del baile, estaba un
tecolote parado arriba del gallinero, la casa
onde durmían las gallinas. Y entonces mi tío
entró a la casa, agarró el rifle, y le puso una cruz
a la bala, y dijo, “Yo mato ese tecolote porque
talvez sea una bruja.” Y entonces él le tiró un
Nahuatlisms
tiro y le dio al tecolote. El tecolote cayó pa’ abajo
del techo y cuando fueron a buscarlo, no lo
hallaron. El cuento es que al siguiente día estaba
una señora muy enferma. Y cuando fueron unas
de sus vecinas a verla . . . le preguntó la vecina
que si qué le pasaba. Izque le dijo, “Anoche fui
a andar vuelta de tecolote y me dio Patricio un
balazo.” ‘I had my grandmother over there, a
very old lady. And I had an uncle and aunt who
lived with her. They never got married but they
all lived together. And they told me that one
night they had gone to a dance. And when they
came back from the dance, there was an owl
perched on top of the chicken coop, the house
where the chickens sleep. And then my uncle
went in the house, grabbed his rifle, and put a
cross on the bullet, and said, “I’m gonna kill
that owl because it might be a witch.” And then
he fired a shot and he hit the owl. The owl fell
off of the roof and when they went to look for it,
they couldn’t find it. The story is that the next
day there was a lady who was very sick. And
when some of her neighbors went to see her . . .
one neighbor asked her what had happened to
her. She supposedly said, “I went out last night
turned into an owl and Patricio shot me.”’
Tecolote is a Nahuatl loanword that seems not to have
spread beyond the areas of Aztec and Mexican influence.
Of the 128 tokens of singular tecolote and plural tecolotes
in the CORDE and 29 in the CREA, only 2 occur in docu-
ments outside Mexico and Central America. ‘Owl’ is not
included in the ALM, but its use is certainly widespread
in that country. It is another of those Nahuatlisms that
Lope Blanch (1979, 35) found to reside in the vocabulary of
practically all Mexicans of the capital city. Moreno de Alba
(1992a, 119) tells us that it alternates there with búho.
An item elicited in both the ALM survey and the
NMCOSS is the label for a humble dwelling, our ‘Hut,
shack’ variable. This item turns out to be much more
problematic than ‘Owl’ or ‘Grasshopper’ because the
concept itself is subjective and elusive, since one person’s
home may be another person’s hut. In addition, most
people have more than 1 word to cover the reference, as
our use of the 2 English words in the variable name indi-
cates. Our consultants offered 41 distinct variants, but
28 of these were mentioned by only 1 or 2 persons. Many
participants in both the ALM and the NMCOSS simply
used the word for ‘house’ casa, usually as the diminu-
tive casita or with some descriptive modifier (de indio
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100 chapter seven

 7-3. ‘Owl’

Nahuatlisms 101
‘Indian,’ pobre ‘poor,’ tirada ‘falling down,’ vieja ‘old,’ and
so forth). These forms based on casa show no significant
patterning either geographically or socially and are not
further discussed here.
Map 7-4 shows the occurrence of just 3 of the most
common terms used in New Mexican Spanish. The most
frequently cited variant is the Nahuatlism jacal. With 110
first choices (including 5 jacalito), it is the preference of a
third of the 329 consultants. This early borrowing from
the Nahuatl xahcal-li was already being commonly used
in the first years of colonial New Mexico, as attested in
the Valverde interrogatory of 1602 that investigated
Oñate’s venture into the plains northeast of New Mexico
(Craddock 2002, 93):
(7-10) [H]auian muerto al capitan Umaña y a su
jente, quemandolos en vn jacal ‘[T]hey had
killed Captain Umaña and his people, burning
them in a native hut’ (our translation).
The distribution of jacal in map 7-4 shows the same broad
coverage of the NMCOSS territory as that of chapulín in
map 7-1, cuates in map 7-2, and tecolote in map 7-3, but
with considerably less density.
However, the viability of this Nahuatlism is being
severely undermined by 2 other terms that may have their
origins in English. One of these, shaque (which we could
equally well spell chaque), is definitely an Anglicism, an
adaptation of English shack. Thirty-seven consultants (11%)
preferred this term for ‘Hut, shack.’ An important observa-
tion here is that 23 of these persons (62%) pronounced the
initial consonant of shaque as a palatal fricative [š], as in
the English pronunciation of the word, and not as a palatal
affricate [č] as might be expected in Spanish. English has a
contrast between palatal fricatives and affricates (shop and
chop are two different things, as are ship and chip, sheep and
cheep, etc.), but Spanish does not. However, many dialects
of Spanish around the world, from Spain to Cuba to Chile
to Mexico allow the ch to be pronounced as the palatal fric-
ative [š] under certain conditions, especially in informal
speech. Thus, chico may sometimes be pronounced [číko]
and sometimes [šíko]. Many speakers of New Mexican
Spanish participate in such phonetic alternation (see the
study by Jaramillo and Bills 1982). But 62% is an awfully
high proportion of [š] for the somewhat formal interview
situation in which this word was elicited. Rather, this high
frequency of the fricative suggests that the word was fairly
recently borrowed into Spanish and is not yet completely
integrated into the Spanish sound system.
102
It is also relevant that Espinosa’s early study of the
English elements in New Mexican Spanish (1914–15)
does not include the word shaque (or šaque, as he would
have spelled it) nor does “A vocabulary of New Mexican
Spanish,” the compilation by Gross (1935) of words
appearing in Espinosa’s publications. In addition, map
7-4 shows that the small number of consultants who chose
this label are found in the Traditional Spanish area that
has been more susceptible to adoption of English loan-
words to replace existing terms (as we previously showed
with torque for ‘Turkey’ in chapter 4, see map 4-3). All
these facts tend to support the assumption that the word
shaque is a fairly recent borrowing from English.
The origin of the third variant, chante, is less clear.
A total of 68 consultants (21%) offered this form, includ-
ing 6 cases of the diminutive chantecito. It looks very
much like it could be a borrowing of English shanty
(itself borrowed from Canadian French chantier as the
term of a logger’s temporary camp construction). In fact,
Espinosa (1914–15, 258–59, 287) documents the form in
New Mexican Spanish at the beginning of the twenti-
eth century and identifies it as an Anglicism. He cites it
with the initial consonant pronounced as a palatal frica-
tive, šante, and reports that the same form occurs in the
Spanish of Santa Barbara, California.
Blanco (1971, 558) for California and Cobos (2003)
for New Mexico register the word as chante, and they
too consider it an Anglicism. However, both identify the
term as Pachuco slang, the extensively studied argot (also
called caló) associated with the Mexican American youth
subculture that became prominent in the Southwest in
the 1930s and 1940s (see, e.g., Barker 1958; Coltharp 1965;
Webb 1976). And in Pachuco slang chante is used to refer
to one’s home. Both Blanco and Cobos therefore cite only
the meaning ‘house, home,’ as in Blanco’s example:
(7-11) ¡Estaba guaino y me fui pal chante! ‘I was
drunk and I went home!’ (our translation).
Are we dealing with the same word here? Presumably
so. The Pachuco argot is laden with Spanish slang vocab-
ulary that developed over many centuries, but it was a
U.S. phenomenon that incorporated many words from
English. This fact gives strength to Espinosa’s claim
that chante is an Anglicism. The term is widespread in
Mexican slang as well, and Quesada Pacheco (1991) docu-
ments its occurrence in youth slang of Costa Rica.
To complicate matters a bit more, Smead and Clegg
(1990, 28) and Emiliano (1976, 99) include the word chante
chapter seven
 7-4. ‘Hut, shack’

Nahuatlisms 103
in their lists of Nahuatlisms, and Coltharp (1965, 145) also
suggests a Nahuatl origin, though she prudently notes, “It
may come from American ‘shanty.’” Indeed, Karttunen
(1983) provides the Nahuatl word chantli with the mean-
ing ‘home, residence,’ and we would expect the integrated
borrowing of this word to be precisely chante. We would
not expect Spanish speakers to borrow a general word for
‘house,’ but it would be not at all surprising to borrow the
term and give it the meaning associated with an Indian
dwelling considered to be inferior, that is, a ‘Hut, shack.’
Also, it would not be surprising to find a later “upgrad-
ing” of meaning in slang use. Just as Pachuco ruca and its
English translation old lady may be used by a young man
to refer to his wife or girlfriend, so chante ‘hut’ might well
be used slangily to refer to one’s home.
The mystery deepens. Are we dealing with an
Anglicism or a Nahuatlism? If chante were indeed a
Nahuatlism, we would expect it to show up in Mexico.
However, Santamaría (1959) fails to include that word or
any other form that would seem to derive from Nahuatl
chantli. Also, not a single informant produced this term
for the ‘Hut, shack’ variable in the Atlas lingüístico de
México. We think these findings shift the weight of the
evidence toward the English origin.
It is also relevant to note the pronunciation of that
initial consonant of chante by the NMCOSS consultants.
Only 10 of these persons, 15%, used the palatal fricative [š]
as in the English shanty. Recall that 62% employed that
fricative sound for shaque. This difference suggests that
chante is the earlier borrowing, that it has become more
integrated into the Spanish sound system. The fact that
Espinosa (1914–15) includes this word, but not shaque, in
his inventory of Anglicisms provides additional support
for this supposition. We conclude, then, that chante is a
loanword from English shanty, and not a Nahuatlism.
But we’re not yet finished with the ‘Hut, shack’ vari-
able. In the ALM, 2 variants dominate, jacal and choza.
The more frequent choice is the Nahuatlism jacal, repre-
senting nearly half of the responses in comparison with
a one-third showing in the NMCOSS. Mejías (1980, 153)
lists jacal as an early Nahuatlism that is documented in
Mexico for both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
and that continues to be of absolute general knowledge in
Mexico in the twentieth century. It is also included in the
99th percentile list of Lope Blanch (1979, 35).
But running second to jacal in Mexico with about
a third of the responses is the standard Spanish choza.
In the NMCOSS, only 14 consultants preferred the choza
label. Those persons were scattered across the region
and are not included on map 7-4. And once again life
104
experiences with Spanish rather than geography seem to
be the significant predictor in selecting the standard term.
Of the 14, 6 had a parent or spouse born in Mexico, and
another 6 had studied Spanish in high school or college.
Alterations
Early Nahuatlisms of the second type are those that
continue to be widely used in New Mexican Spanish but
show a substantial change in form or meaning in compar-
ison with the variant typical of Mexico.
Let us first examine a few alterations in meaning.
For instance, an early Nahuatl borrowing that has under-
gone a semantic alteration in New Mexican Spanish is
the term mitote, derived from Nahuatl mihtoh-tli ‘dance.’
Santamaría (1959, 728), however, describes this as a
special type of Aztec dance that involved heavy drinking.
Cobos reports that in colonial New Mexico mitote was ‘a
dance with drinking and a great deal of noise,’ which he
supports with a translation from the Colección de docu-
mentos inéditos of the Antonio de Espejo’s 1582–83 expe-
dition: ‘And day and night, during the three days that
we stayed there, they always made mitotes and balls, and
dances’ (Cobos 1983, 112, a quote absent in Cobos 2003).
The early meaning of a dance or loud party has been
retained in Mexico as well as elsewhere in the Southwest
(see, for example, Galván and Teschner 1975, 1977).
However, that original meaning appears no longer
to be common in Traditional Spanish, where mitote now
is associated primarily or solely with the idea of ‘gossip,’
particularly gossip of the malicious kind that creates
trouble and discord (though the 2003 edition of Cobos
also offers the meaning of ‘a Saturday night dance with
drinking and a great deal of noise’). In our experience,
the extended sense is maintained in all derived forms
such as mitotear ‘to gossip, to spread rumors’ and mito-
tero ‘person who gossips a lot, troublemaker.’
This kind of semantic extension has also occurred
with the word comal (from Nahuatl comal-li), which for
the Aztecs was a flat earthen plate used for cooking corn
tortillas. In Mexico that meaning is retained though the
utensil may now also be made of metal (Brambila 1957), a
usage reported as well for Costa Rica (Quesada 1991). In
New Mexican Spanish comal is now typically used to refer
to a metal griddle (see Cobos 2003) or the heated flat part of
a stove, such as the old-fashioned wood-burning stove.
In addition, however, 15 NMCOSS consultants have
further extended the meaning of this word to include
‘Skillet.’ In this case, the consultants were responding
not to a small, thin skillet but specifically to a picture
chapter seven
of a cast-iron skillet in which chicken was being fried.
Significantly, all 15 represent rural Traditional Spanish
areas and all but 2 were over the age of seventy. It is
doubtful that this usage was ever very widespread, but it
is abundantly clear that it has now become a relic in the
New Mexican Spanish museum. (Other terms for ‘Skillet’
are treated in chapter 9; see map 9-4.)
Another early Nahuatlism that shows a substantial
change in meaning in New Mexican Spanish is cajete. The
Nahuatl source, caxi-tl, referred to a ‘cup, bowl, vessel,’
and the word cajete in modern Mexican Spanish gener-
ally refers to an ‘earthen bowl or basin.’ In New Mexican
Spanish, however, the meaning of the word has been
changed to refer to the large metal ‘Tub’ or ‘washtub’ once
so widely used for washing clothes as well as for bathing,
and the original meaning of bowl or basin is generally
lost. Over three-quarters of the NMCOSS consultants (251
of 328 respondents, 77%) chose cajete to label the metal
‘Tub’ concept. Map 7-5 shows that cajete is the usual term
for ‘Tub’ throughout the Traditional Spanish region. In
contrast, the Border Spanish term is the standard tina,
the preference of 63 consultants (19%).
As just noted, a common use of the washtub was
for bathing. It is quite natural, then, for speakers to
further extend the meaning of the label for ‘Tub’ to
cover the modern ‘Bathtub.’ Although three-fourths of
the NMCOSS consultants (244 of 325) offered the stan-
dard Spanish term baño for ‘Bathtub,’ 27 persons in the
Traditional Spanish area preferred the cajete label (and 33
persons in the Border Spanish regions preferred tina).
The Nahuatl word for a pottery spoon—xomatli in
Siméon, xumatli in Molina—was borrowed into Spanish
as jumate. This label has been extended in New Mexican
Spanish to refer to ‘Dipper,’ the long-handled metal cup
used especially for drinking water, for example, at a well or
from a large water container, as illustrated in example 7-12:
(7-12) Carreábamos agua del ojito. Teníamos un
jumate pa’ beber agua. [Interviewer: ¿Todos
bebían del mismo jumate?] Unhunh . . . antes
no había germs. ‘We’d bring water from the
spring. We had a dipper for drinking water.
[Did everyone drink from the same dipper?]
Yeah . . . in those days we didn’t have germs.’
(interview 143)
When presented a picture of a cowboy with this object
in hand, nearly two-thirds of the NMCOSS consultants
(210 of 325, 65%) responded with jumate, including 5 cases
of the diminutive form jumatito. The only other form
Nahuatlisms
attaining more than 10 responses is a borrowing from
English: 12 cases of unassimilated dipper and 18 cases of
fully assimilated dipa.
The prominence of jumate for ‘Dipper’ in the
Traditional Spanish area, as shown in map 7-6, indicates
that it is a Nahuatlism brought early into Nuevo México.
In rather sharp contrast, the resort to using the inte-
grated borrowing from English shows up prominently in
Border Spanish, quite at odds with our earlier observa-
tions regarding ‘Turkey’ and ‘Hut, shack’ that Anglicisms
are often associated with Traditional Spanish.
Why should this peculiar geographical contrast
show up? The answer seems to lie in divergent cultural
and linguistic histories in the development of the water-
drinking implement. The Atlas lingüístico de México
includes such an instrument, but it is represented as the
half of a gourd shell. The use of a half-gourd to drink
from, while long since absent from U.S. culture, is quite
typical in Mexico. Consequently, the response to this
stimulus in the ALM was almost always jícara (see mapa
891), which happens to be another Nahuatl borrowing,
from xical-li ‘gourd vessel.’ Nevertheless, an occasional
person in a half dozen communities in northwestern
Mexico offered jumate (sometimes jomate). Santamaría
(1959), too, reports that jumate occurs in northern Mexico
for a half-gourd used as a spoon or for drinking water.
It appears, then, that 2 different Nahuatlisms came to
be used for a drinking implement, with jícara now winning
out in modern Mexico. The use of jumate must have once
been more widespread there but now survives only in the
remote northwest. We can feel confident that it is the term
that was brought into the NMCOSS territory and that its
meaning was extended to refer to the drinking implement
made of metal. It appears that for those with closer ties to
Mexico, there is no obvious term for this metal object, so it
is quite understandable that persons in the Border Spanish
areas might turn to English dipper to label this distinctive
cultural artifact. Only 2 NMCOSS consultants ventured to
extend the Mexican label jícara to cover this metal imple-
ment; the parents of both were born in Mexico.
The Nahuatl word for ‘butterfly,’ papalo-tl, seems
to have been borrowed into Spanish as papalote at an
early date for reference to the flying toy ‘Kite.’ Map 7-7
shows the distribution in New Mexican Spanish of the
2 principal labels for ‘Kite,’ papalote and a borrowing of
the English word. The fact that the Nahuatlism is used
throughout the Traditional Spanish territory indicates
that it was likely brought into the area in the early colo-
nial period. It is also the form offered as a first response by
a majority (187, 57%) of the 328 consultants who provided
105
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106 chapter seven

 7-6. ‘Dipper’

Nahuatlisms 107
data for this item. Pedrero (2002, 178–79) says that it
comprises over three-quarters (76%) of the responses for
‘Kite’ across the five Southwest states in her study.
The only other variant commonly reported in the
NMCOSS is a much later borrowing, this time from
English. This borrowing was usually pronounced in
unassimilated form as kite [kait] (98 cases), but some-
times more phonologically integrated as caite (12 cases).
The Anglicism was the first choice of a third (34%) of
our consultants, replacing papalote particularly in the
younger generations. For instance, while 79% of those
above the age of sixty-four preferred the papalote term,
only 38% of those under the age of forty-one did so.
Papalote for ‘Kite’ can be found in Mejías’s list of
Nahuatlisms that are documented in Mexico for both the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that continue to
be borrowings of absolute general knowledge in Mexico
in the twentieth century (1980, 153). Mapa 802 of the Atlas
lingüístico de México confirms the current status, with
papalote being the dominant form across the country
and with cometa and huila/güila showing up as the prin-
cipal minor forms in the northern half and the north-
east, respectively. Only 1 NMCOSS consultant offered the
standard variant cometa, though 1 young consultant only
slightly missed that target with the response cormeta.
Only 1 person preferred huila.
But while retaining that original Spanish mean-
ing of ‘Kite,’ the term papalote has expanded the scope
of its meaning in New Mexican Spanish to include a
‘Pinwheel,’ the toy fan on a stick that twirls when the
stick is waved. The majority (52%) of the NMCOSS
consultants used papalote to name this toy, and another
10% used the same Nahuatlism in the Spanish diminu-
tive form, papalotito. Given that a fourth of the consul-
tants could offer no Spanish response (22% no response
and 3% English response), the 2 Nahuatlism forms repre-
sent fully 82% of those who actually responded with a
Spanish word. The geographical distribution of the
2 forms in New Mexican Spanish is much like that of
papalote for ‘Kite,’ that is, covering the entire region, so
we do not include that map here.
In Mexico, the most widespread label for ‘Pinwheel’
is rehilete (with several variant pronunciations), a label
favored by only 1 NMCOSS consultant. The extension
of papalote to cover this concept is reported in the ALM
(mapa 809), but there are only about 15 cases scattered
across northern Mexico. The extension of meaning has
advanced considerably more in New Mexican Spanish.
A still further semantic alteration is the very reason-
able expansion of the term papalote to label a ‘Windmill’
108
of the western type used for extracting water from the
ground. A total of 58% of the 334 respondents chose this
term. However, 27 persons claimed to not have a label for
this agrarian artifact and another 25 could offer only the
English label windmill. Thus, of those who could come up
with a Spanish label, 70% reported the Nahuatlism.
Coming in at a very distant second place in pref-
erential terms with just 16% of the Spanish responses is
the label molino, occasionally reported with modifica-
tions such as molino de viento (6 responses) or molino de
agua (4 responses). Molino is the general word for ‘mill’
in Spanish, while molino de viento is the standard form
for ‘Windmill.’ Map 7-8 shows that the restricted distri-
bution of the molino variants appear prominently in the
northeastern NMCOSS region, a restricted distribution
that suggests a prominent subdialect area.
In contrast, the use of papalote for ‘Windmill’ is
spread across the New Mexican Spanish territory. More
important still is the strong manifestation of papalote in
the southern area, implying that the same semantic exten-
sion may be present in Mexico, at least in the northern
part. Regrettably, this lexical variable was not included in
the ALM, but Santamaría (1959) acknowledges reports of
papalote for ‘Windmill’ (“molino de viento”) as a fronter-
izo usage, that is, in the borderlands of northern Mexico.
There are 2 other very minor variants that are of
interest because of their occurrence primarily in the
far northern part of the NMCOSS region. Abanico, the
general Spanish word for ‘fan,’ received 11 responses
(including 1 abanico de agua), mostly from speakers in
this area. Noria, including variants such as noria de aigre
and noria de viento, totaled 15 responses that occur in a
tightly restricted area of the central north. As we will see
later in the discussion of map 15-10, noria is the widely
preferred term for ‘Well’ in New Mexican Spanish.
Turning now to alterations in form, an example of
a Nahuatlism that retains its original Nahuatl mean-
ing but appears to show a change in form is seen in map
7-9 for ‘Buzzard’ (the ‘turkey vulture’ common to the
region). This map displays the distribution patterns for
the 2 major Nahuatl reflexes—zopilote and chupilote—as
well as a more recently entering form, aura. The sparse-
ness of attestations on this map results from the startling
fact that nearly half (45%) of the 339 respondents could
not provide a Spanish label; 115 offered no term at all and
39 responded with an English word.
In Mexico the most general pronunciation for
the Nahuatl borrowing is zopilote (from the Nahuatl
tzopilo-tl). This variable was not included in the ALM
survey, but zopilote is cited at length in Santamaría (1959)
chapter seven
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Nahuatlisms 109
 7-8. ‘Windmill’

110 chapter seven

 7-9. ‘Buzzard’

Nahuatlisms 111
and is acknowledged in the DRAE as typical of Mexico
and Central America. This form also occurs in New
Mexican Spanish, but only 40 of the NMCOSS respon-
dents (12%) favor zopilote (or rarely, zupilote).
The by far more common New Mexican Spanish
variant, with 85 responses (25%), has a different initial
consonant, chupilote. In addition, there were 9 cases of
chopilote, chipilote, or other similar variants. Taking
into consideration the large number of our consultants
who were able to provide no response or only an English
response for this bird, we find chupilote and its variants
with initial ch to be the favored word for over half (51%)
of those who gave Spanish responses. This variant of
the Nahuatl borrowing appears to be an innovation in
form independent from Mexico. It is found neither in
Santamaría (1959) nor in the DRAE. Alvar (2000, 282)
reports this variant only in New Mexico and Arizona.
But we cannot be sure that chupilote represents an
innovation that developed in New Mexican territory.
The initial tz of Nahuatl tzopilo-tl represents an alveo-
lar affricate sound [ts] like the ts of Betsy in English, a
sound sequence that does not exist in the modern Spanish
phonological system. It may be adapted to the American
Spanish system by reduction to a simple [s], as happened
to yield zopilote. Or it may be adapted to the only affri-
cate of Spanish, the palatal ch, phonetically [t∫]. Other
Nahuatlisms in Mexican Spanish were adopted in this
second way, for example, chanate ‘grackle,’ from Nahuatl
tzana-tl. Thus, chupilote may well represent an early adap-
tation from Nahuatl that was brought along to colonial
New Mexico in its first century.
Whatever its origin, as map 7-9 indicates, the
chupilote variant is now a prominent characteristic of
Traditional Spanish. Zopilote, on the other hand, has
just 36 first choices and is scattered randomly across the
NMCOSS area. Oddly enough, it is not even strong in
the Border Spanish area, where a third variant, aura (the
choice of 16 consultants), turns out to be the preferred
label. Aura, which the DRAE assesses to be “of American
origin,” is a fairly recent linguistic immigrant from
Mexico. It appears to be about equally favored with zopi-
lote in Texas, according to the data collected by Alvar.
The preference for zopilote among the NMCOSS
consultants is associated not with geography, but with
two other kinds of exposure to Mexican Spanish: greater
number of Spanish language courses and greater number
of years of education in general. For example, while zopi-
lote is favored by just 12% overall, it is the choice of 28% of
those who had taken three or more Spanish courses.
112
A perhaps more significant change in the morpho-
logical shape of an early borrowed form concerns the
term for ‘Water salamander’ (also locally called ‘water
dog’). In Mexican Spanish, the form is ajolote, which
derives from the Nahuatl axolo-tl. This was the term
of choice for only 6 of our consultants—2 from south-
ern New Mexico (Las Cruces, Silver City), 1 from east-
ern New Mexico, and 3 from southeastern Colorado who
had parents born in Mexico. Nevertheless, ajolote is quite
likely the form that was brought into New Mexico in the
early period. However, that label has been altered in New
Mexican Spanish today to guajolote, sometimes realized
as guajalote. These 2 variants are illustrated in the follow-
ing two examples, which also reveal how this animal is
associated with an intriguing myth that was mentioned
repeatedly in our interviews:
(7-13) Platicaban de antes . . . que se sentaban a usar
el bathroom en un zacatal cuando caiba agua y
el guajalote le entraba a una mujer. ‘They used
to say that they [women] would sit down to use
the bathroom in a patch of grass when it was
raining and a water salamander would enter a
woman.’ (interview 245)
(7-14) No vayan en la acequia, les van a meter
los guajolotes. ‘Don’t go into the irrigation
ditch, the salamanders will crawl into you [a
common warning to girls].’ (interview 3)
Semantic matters make this case more interesting.
As noted in chapter 4, for a good number of NMCOSS
consultants the word for ‘Turkey’ also happens to be
guajolote or guajalote, deriving from Nahuatl huehx-
olo-tl ‘turkey.’ The synonymy of guajolote may well be an
important factor contributing to the rapid expansion of
the English borrowing torque for ‘Turkey.’ The sense of
insecurity deriving from the synonymy may also relate
to loss of a term for ‘Water salamander.’ Fully 35% of the
NMCOSS consultants were unable to provide a Spanish
word for that pictured reptile, while 13 persons could
give only the Spanish word for lizard (lagartijo), and still
others variously identified it in Spanish as a toad, tadpole,
worm, and even snake! Another factor in this lexical loss,
of course, must be the more limited rural experience of
Hispanics today.
The preferred term for ‘Pickaxe’ (or ‘pick’) in New
Mexican Spanish may also be a Nahuatlism, but there are
several issues of form and interpretation. Let’s begin with
the NMCOSS picture provided in map 7-10, which depicts
chapter seven
the distributions of the 4 most common words for ‘Pickaxe’:
talache, talacho, pico, and pica. Clearly dominant overall,
and particularly characteristic of the northern Traditional
Spanish area, is the form talache, numbering 178 cases
and accounting for 53% of the total responses. In addition,
there were 14 instances of minor variations on the form
(talacha, taliche, taloche, telache, telacha, and toloche) that
are not included on the map. However, there were also 14
cases (just 4%) of another variant, talacho, which is mapped
because it occurs only in the Border Spanish areas. Finally,
pico (50 cases or 15%) and pica (32 cases, 10%) are promi-
nent in the southern half of the NMCOSS territory.
A comparison with Mexico is instructive. Let us first
deal with the non-Nahuatlism variants. ALM mapa 882
shows that the clearly dominant form in Mexico, repre-
senting some 300 cases, is the standard term pico. This
fact accords well with the prominence of pico in the
Border Spanish areas of map 7-10. However, there seem
to be only 3 instances of pica in Mexico, which suggests
that the rather more significant tally of this form in New
Mexican Spanish is some kind of innovation, perhaps
related to the use of the term pick in English.
As in the NMCOSS, the preferred Mexican vari-
ant of the supposed Nahuatlism is talache, with some
100 responses (including 1 talachi) on mapa 822. The
absence of talache in northwestern Mexico anywhere
near New Mexico indicates that its presence in New
Mexican Spanish derives from an early colonial intro-
duction. In contrast, there are only 30–35 talacho cita-
tions and these do show up in northwest Mexico. Thus,
the Border Spanish showing of talacho in the NMCOSS is
no surprise. Finally in Mexico there were just 6 instances
of talacha plus a single case of tlalacha. Given the relative
strengths of these Nahuatlism variants as ascertained by
the ALM, it is curious to find that talacho and not talache
is included as a Mexicanism in the DRAE.
Now, is this form truly a Nahuatlism? Santamaría
(1959) says it is. He claims that talacha derives from the
combining of the Nahuatl tlal-li ‘earth’ and Spanish hacha
‘axe,’ thus tlal-hacha ‘earth-axe’ or ‘ground-axe’ (like the
sole ALM case tlalacha of the preceding paragraph). He
posits that the masculine gender talache and talacho are
derivatives of that original form. However, in both Mexico
and New Mexico, the feminine variants are rare (approxi-
mately 5% and 3% respectively). The masculine forms are
clearly the rule. If the Nahuatl derivation is correct, there
has clearly been a significant alteration in phonological
and grammatical form over the intervening centuries. The
evidence of the early introduction of the talache variants
Nahuatlisms
into New Mexico and the present distribution of those vari-
ants in Mexico suggest that this Nahuatlism, if it is indeed
a Nahuatlism, was at one time in more widespread use in
both countries. It has lost ground to pico in Mexico and to
pica and pico in the NMCOSS territory.
An example of change in both form and meaning is
the label for ‘Trunk,’ elicited with a picture of an old-fash-
ioned metal and wood trunk for storing clothes and keep-
sakes. The 2 principal responses were 2 Nahuatlisms, petaca
and petaquilla. Petaca is an early adaptation from Nahuatl
petlacal-li, ‘woven wicker hamper,’ while petaquilla appears
to be formed by adding the Spanish diminutive suffix to the
earlier petaca (see Maffla Bilbao 2003, 360–62). The origi-
nal meaning of petaca was a kind of suitcase or trunk and it
continues with that meaning in Mexico today. The diminu-
tive form, petaquilla, once had the meaning in Mexico of a
woven basket for carrying fruits and such (Santamaría 1959,
838), though it could also mean a small trunk or suitcase.
Unfortunately, the ALM includes no item for which either
form could be elicited. However, Mejías (1980, 53) lists peta-
quilla as a Nahuatlism documented in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries that is not generally known in the
twentieth century. Lope Blanch (1979) reports that petaca
is widely known in Mexico City nowadays, but petaquilla
does not even fall into his “almost unknown” category.
The DRAE includes petaca as a Mexicanism and makes no
mention of petaquilla.
Conversely, as map 7-11 demonstrates, in New
Mexican Spanish the form petaquilla has almost
completely replaced petaca. Of the 331 NMCOSS consul-
tants questioned for this item, 240 (73%) favored the
diminutive petaquilla to label this large trunk, and there
were an additional 10 distortions of this form (e.g., pate-
quilla, pecatilla, tapaquilla) that are omitted from the
map. In contrast, only 27 consultants (8%) offered the
petaca form. It is somewhat surprising to observe that
the more Mexican form, petaca, is not particularly asso-
ciated with the typical Border Spanish areas but rather
shows up most prominently in central New Mexico, the
Albuquerque area in particular.
A still further extension of the meaning of petaquilla
is for reference to the ‘trunk of an automobile,’ as illus-
trated by the following commentary by the husband of
consultant 299 who intervened in the interview to explain
some difficulties in understanding Mexicans:
(7-15) Un muchacho de México . . . me dijo, “Déme
los dados de la cajuela.” Y cajuela yo sabía que
era la petaquilla del carro. Anduve buscando y
113
 7-10. ‘Pickaxe’

114 chapter seven

 7-11. ‘Trunk’

Nahuatlisms 115
 le dije que “aquí no traes dados.” Pos, tuvo que
salirse de abajo del carro y dijo, “Aquí están,”
dijo. Eran los sockets. ‘A guy from Mexico
. . . said to me, “Get me the dados from the
cajuela.” And I knew that cajuela was the trunk
of the car. I went looking and I told him that
“You don’t have any dados.” Well, he had to get
out from under the car and he said, “Here they
are,” he said. They were the socket wrenches.’
Among the other responses for ‘Trunk’ are 16 cases of
velís. These responses no doubt reflect a slight degree of lexi-
cal loss or confusion since velís in New Mexican Spanish is
the heavily preferred (80%) label for ‘Suitcase,’ a container
quite close to ‘Trunk’ in semantic space. There are also 10
cases of the standard label baúl (though pronounced baule
4 times and bable 2 times). Finally, 6 consultants resorted
to the English trunk and another 5 made attempts to inte-
grate this word into Spanish (tranca, tronca, tronque). None
of these other responses display any geographical pattern-
ing and are therefore excluded from map 7-11.
Reductions
The third category of early Nahuatl borrowings includes
forms that were once extensively used but appear now to
be in the process of decline, becoming relics. An example
of a form that may be on the decline is milpa ‘cornfield’
(from Nahuatl mil-li ‘field’ plus the postposition -pan).
We can be confident that this word has long enjoyed use
in the NMCOSS region. There is, for example, a reference
to las milpas de Santa Fe at the time of the Pueblo uprising
(Twitchell 1914, 9). Although neither ‘cornfield’ nor ‘culti-
vated field’ were included as items in our survey, we know
that this Nahuatlism continues to be widely used in New
Mexican Spanish. Nevertheless, we also get the feeling that
it is losing ground of late to the English borrowing fil with
its more general meaning ‘field (of any crop),’ exemplified
in example 7-16:
(7-16) En las noches cuando andábanos regando ahi
en los files se vían por ondequiera. ‘When we
would be irrigating the fields at night, you would
see them [fireflies] everywhere.’ (interview 279)
The more general meaning of fil no doubt proves more
useful for an increasingly less agrarian society.
There are two traits that help us to identify Nahuatl­
isms in decline. First, such forms have a special distribution
pattern: they are generally found only in the northern part
116
of the survey region in rural areas where the early colonists
settled. Second, as is characteristic of relic forms in general,
they are used only by a small percentage of the consultants,
typically the elderly.
Map 7-12 displays the distribution of 2 Nahuatlisms
elicited as labels for ‘String.’ Mecate is derived from
Nahuatl meca-tl, ‘cord or rope, whip made of knotted
cords, vine,’ and íchite comes from Nahuatl ich-tli ‘thread
made from maguey fiber,’ though both Cobos (2003)
and Santamaría (1959) cite ixtli as the Nahuatl source.
Only 20 of the 310 respondents (6%) gave íchite as their
preferred label and 52 (17%) gave mecate. Both terms,
íchite in particular, occur primarily in rural areas of the
northern NMCOSS territory. In early New Mexico both
forms probably referred to a crude cord made of vegeta-
ble fiber. It appears that as the artifact has developed into
more refined manufactured string, the label has shifted to
a more standard Spanish word, cordón, favored by nearly
half (48%) of the NMCOSS consultants.
These findings contrast interestingly with the situa-
tion in Mexico. Mapa 821 of the ALM shows that cordón is
rare among the numerous words for ‘String’ there. Instead,
the most common label is precisely the Nahuatlism
mecate, which is also listed in the DRAE as a term used
from Mexico south to Venezuela. Map 7-12 shows that in
New Mexican Spanish, a few cases of mecate show up in
Mexican influence areas as well as in the rural north.
The other Nahuatlism, generally spelled ixtle in
Mexico, turns up exceedingly rarely as the term for ‘String’
in that country. Mapa 821 includes only 4 instances of istle
and 2 of iste. However, the ALM survey separately elicited
a word for the fiber of the maguey plant (mapa 826), and in
this case the Nahuatlism shows up predominantly but with
many different pronunciations. The final syllable varies a
lot (tle, cle, tli, cli, te, ti, le, tre, clín). But it is the reflex of
the first consonant, ch [č], of the Nahuatl borrowing that
proves more illuminating for comparative purposes. In
Mexico that consonant tends to be x [š]; s; the spelling
pronunciation [ks]; or even an aspirated [h]. But there is
just 1 case of ch, transcribed as ichtle, and it occurs in the
middle of Aztec country in central Mexico. The CORDE
documents the unadapted ichtli in the sixteenth century
in the famous manuscript, the Florentine Codex, of Fray
Bernardino de Sahagún, a Franciscan missionary to the
Aztec people. There are CORDE cites for ixtle and istle
only from the eighteenth century and all the cases are in
Mexican documents.
It seems certain, then, that the New Mexican Spanish
íchite, which retains the original form of the first conso-
nant, represents a very early borrowing from Nahuatl.
chapter seven
 7-12. ‘String’

Nahuatlisms 117
Early colonists must have brought the original form to
New Mexico, and here it became phonologically inte-
grated by retaining the ch but adding a vowel to follow
it (í-chi-te), a credible adaptation since ch never occurs
in syllable-final position in native Spanish words. The
integration solutions that prevailed in Mexico are quite
different from the solution arrived at in New Mexico and
southern Colorado.
It is common for the word for ‘String’ to be general-
ized to refer to what we label in English as ‘Shoelace’ or
‘shoestring.’ But the paths of generalization for Mexican
and New Mexican Spanish have been quite different. The
5 principal terms for ‘Shoelace’ found in the NMCOSS are
charted on map 7-13, and each 1 displays a geographical
distribution of interest. Let us deal first with the 3 most
frequently cited terms.
The Nahuatlism mecate surfaces more strongly here
than for ‘String,’ cited by 89 of the 323 consultants (28%)
queried for ‘Shoelace’; there were also 2 deviant responses
of macate. Map 7-13 shows again that the preference for
mecate is very much a feature of Traditional Spanish, but
it exhibits the relic distribution across the rural north that
we might expect of a declining form.
In a tie with mecate for most popular is cinta, with
28% of the responses (90 preferences). Map 7-13 shows this
label to be a characteristic of Border Spanish though it
also displays a reasonable showing in Traditional Spanish.
The prominence of cinta in the areas of Mexican influ-
ence suggests a form in ascendance. The standard cordón
comes in a close third with 20% of the preferences (66
cases). Cordón contrasts with the preceding 2 by carving
out a geographical niche for itself in central New Mexico,
especially toward the west and in Albuquerque.
But the remaining 2 principal terms make an interest-
ing geographical display more complicated and still more
interesting. Coming in fourth place with 28 responses
(9%) is cintilla (realized in 10 of those cases as centilla).
This diminutive form, unlike its base cinta, is restricted
like mecate to rural Traditional Spanish regions. It will
be noted, though, that many occurrences of cinta in the
Traditional Spanish area are tightly interlocked with these
diminutives. Alvar (2000, 209) documents both cintas and
cintillas for our region, but unfortunately Pedrero (2002,
58) combines these for her analysis. Finally, 16 NMCOSS
consultants offered correa for ‘Shoelace,’ and map 7-13 indi-
cates that these speakers are more closely associated with
Border Spanish, especially the western part.
The contrasts with Mexico are sharp and informa-
tive. In the first place, the most common term for ‘String’
in Mexico, mecate, has failed to generalize to ‘Shoelace.’
118
Mapa 930 of the ALM shows only 6 instances of mecate,
all in the northwestern state of Sonora, a region like New
Mexico quite distant from the centers of Mexican influ-
ence. Significantly, Alvar (2000) also finds this term as
the only label in his westernmost sample, Arizona, just
across the border from Sonora.
Cinta, however, is 1 of the 3 most frequently cited
terms for ‘Shoelace’ in Mexico. It shows up most strongly
in northern Mexico, especially in Chihuahua, accounting
for its pattern of distribution in the Border Spanish areas
of the NMCOSS. Cordón is also one of the most common
Mexican labels, but it occurs in the north mostly along the
east and west coasts and is by far the dominant label in the
Yucatán. Its western distribution in the NMCOSS results
may reflect early and late influence from western Mexico.
The single most frequently mentioned term in the
ALM is agujeta, which was mentioned only once in
the NMCOSS (as abujeta). Not mentioned at all in our
survey is the term cabetes (or cadetes), which is a signif-
icant minor form in Mexico. On the other hand, the
fourth- and fifth-place terms in New Mexican Spanish,
cintilla and correa (as well as the cuerda label offered by 5
persons), did not surface in the Mexico survey.
A Nahuatlism, like vocabulary of any other sort,
may show a reduction in use not because it is displaced
by another form, but because cultural change has made
the particular reference less accessible. We will illustrate
with 2 artifacts for grinding food. Traditionally prominent
borrowings from Nahuatl are the metate, a large stone slab
for grinding, corn in particular (from Nahuatl metla-tl),
and the molcajete, the mortar, a small bowl-like stone, typi-
cally with three legs, for grinding chile and spices (from
molcaxi-tl, which is a compound word formed of mol-li
‘sauce, broth, gravy’ and caxi-tl ‘cup, bowl, vessel,’ the
same form that became the label for ‘Tub’ in New Mexican
Spanish as previously discussed in connection with map
7-5). Both terms have been sufficiently incorporated into
general Spanish to be included in the DRAE.
Both of these terms show attrition in New Mexican
Spanish due to the decline in use of those instruments. Only
60% of 315 NMCOSS consultants offered metate to label the
large ‘Grinding stone.’ A total of 59 persons (19%) could offer
no response at all. Several respondents came close to the
target (metal, metale, petate, tepaque), revealing an attempt
to retrieve from storage the phonological representation of
some long-unused lexical item. A number of others (17 alto-
gether) resorted to the word piedra ‘rock, stone’ in isola-
tion or with some descriptive elaboration, usually involving
the verb moler ‘grind’ (e.g., piedra de moler ‘grinding stone,’
piedra para moler ‘stone for grinding’). Others tried various
chapter seven
 7-13. ‘Shoelace’

Nahuatlisms 119
more or less successful ways to say ‘grinder’: mole, mole-
dor, molero, molino, and even grandidor and granera. More
significantly, the second most common label (offered by 26
consultants) was precisely the label for the other artifact,
molcajete. (The curious may want to know that the native
Spanish moler ‘to grind’ has no etymological connection
with molcajete or with mole, the typically Mexican sauce
made from chocolate, peanuts, and chile, which derives
from Nahuatl mol-li.)
It was only after we noticed the confusion of the
two grinding instruments that we added a picture of a
‘Mortar,’ the bowl-like artifact, to the interview sched-
ule. Consequently, only 238 persons were questioned
about this item. Accuracy in hitting the traditional target
was much worse. Only 53 consultants (22%) responded
with molcajete. Another quarter (24%) could produce no
label at all. Here also there were some misses (e.g., mala-
cate), piedra forms, and ‘grinder’ forms. But the biggest
response was the other Nahuatlism. Fully 43% used the
term metate, many commenting explicitly that they use
the same term for both artifacts.
120
In sum, of these 2 Nahuatlisms, molcajete shows
severe attrition, being co-opted in the main by the other
borrowing. But at the same time, the other form, metate,
is being lost in its own right. Many respondents reported
that they’d never seen such objects or that they vaguely
remembered seeing them at a grandmother’s house, or
in Mexico, or pictured in a book. Although older consul-
tants exhibited a stronger command of both forms, there
was severe loss across the generations, especially with
regard to molcajete.
Regardless of these cases of reduction in the use
of Nahuatlisms, it is abundantly clear from the body of
evidence presented in this chapter that on the substan-
tial bed of Spanish brought over from Spain, the garden
of New Mexican Spanish was sown with far more seeds
of Nahuatl than of the Caribbean languages. Let us turn
now to the unique dialect that sprouted from many Old
World and New World seeds as the garden developed
over a couple of centuries in the soils of New Mexico and
southern Colorado.
chapter seven
Part III

The Development
of Traditional
New Mexican Spanish
 Chap ter 8
El Nuevo México
Independent Developments
• We have seen that the vocabulary of New Mexican
Spanish has been profoundly affected by the exter-
nal influence of other languages. However, many of the
features that most differentiate New Mexican Spanish
from other dialects of Spanish are the changes made
possible by resources internal to the language, the evolu-
tionary process of linguistic “drift” and of cultural adap-
tation to new circumstances that occurs in all languages.
From the beginning, speakers of New Mexican Spanish
were separated from Mexico and the rest of the Spanish-
speaking world by physical obstacles of distance and
desert, as well as by political barriers later on. As a conse-
quence, connections with mainstream Spanish were too
weak for the speakers of New Mexican Spanish to keep
pace with the changes taking place elsewhere in Spanish.
Juan Antonio Trujillo disputes the assumption of
isolation and its linguistic impact on the development
of New Mexican Spanish. His dissertation research
(1997) examined nearly 53,000 words contained in New
Mexican legal documents over more than two hundred
years, from the late seventeenth century to the end of the
nineteenth century. His penetrating, exhaustive analysis
of these data reveals no significant departure over time
from apparent trends in general Spanish. As Trujillo
acknowledges, however, his restricted sample of a partic-
ular kind of written language cannot be considered an
accurate representation of spoken language. Indeed, that
sample is heavily biased toward the language of educated
persons, especially persons trained in the Spanish legal
profession—precisely the persons who are most likely to
be attuned to developments in the standard language.
Our study, in contrast, examines the mundane
spoken language of regular people. Although our data
are drawn from a narrow window of historical time, this
ordinary language is the locus of the linguistic evidence
of where the language came from and where it is headed.
We have seen in previous chapters and will see through-
out this book ample evidence that isolation has had a
substantial effect on New Mexican Spanish. The socio-
political marginalization allowed homegrown linguistic
adaptations to take root and thrive. Autonomous change
of this sort (including borrowings from local languages,
which will be discussed in detail in the next two chapters)
is the diachronic process that has led to the divergence of
the Traditional Spanish dialect from that of Mexico.
The independent innovations in New Mexican
Spanish occurred often, though by no means exclusively,
as a response to different concepts and circumstances.
123
Not surprisingly, therefore, many of the independent
developments have to do with vocabulary. These lexical
changes can be separated into three kinds. Some involve
a simple change in the form of a word, others involve a
change in the meaning of a word, and still others involve
creation of new words, typically by the compound-
ing method favored by Spanish. In addition, unlike the
external influences of Nahuatl and Taino, the creativeness
inherent to a native linguistic system also makes possible
innovative developments in grammar and phonology. We
discuss these four categories of independent development
in separate sections of this chapter.
Change in Form
The simplest kind of change is when the phonological
representation of the word is altered. Sometimes that
change is the result of a general phonological process that
affects many words, such as the retention of h discussed
in chapter 5 concerning forms like hallar and honda.
A parallel change in English is the h-dropping of the
Cockney dialect epitomized in the ’Enry ’Iggins (Henry
Higgins) of the My Fair Lady musical. The fact that
h-dropping characterizes standard Spanish but a dispar-
aged variety of English exemplifies once again the arbi-
trariness of value judgments toward dialects.
In this section, however, we deal not with general
processes but with innovations in pronunciation that
affect individual words. One such innovation in New
Mexican Spanish is the addition of an initial consonant
to the word oso ‘Bear,’ yielding joso. This example doesn’t
represent the general process discussed in chapter 5 since
this word, deriving from Latin ursus, never had an initial
consonant in Spanish. The extent of this seemingly random
and unmotivated change is seen in map 8-1, which shows
that joso is particularly characteristic of rural Traditional
Spanish. However, most speakers of Traditional Spanish
prefer the standard oso. Only 17% of the NMCOSS consul-
tants (57 persons) gave the joso variant.
We can only speculate that pressure from standard
Spanish has limited the distribution of this nonstandard
form. The New Mexico and southern Colorado region is
known for its wildlife and a tradition of hunting. Bears are
a topic that would arise with some frequency in conver-
sations with outsiders, and the presence of that initial
consonant is salient enough to be noticed and remarked
on. It is very possible, then, that the stigmatization of joso
has resulted in a reduction in its use and preference for
the standard variant oso. The fact that joso is more prom-
inent in the speech of the elderly (used by 23% of those
124
age sixty-five and older and only 13% of those younger)
suggests that the use of this innovative form was once
more widespread and is now in decline.
Another independent development concerns the
label for ‘Children.’ This item has many variants, as we
should expect since speakers of any language seem to
know several synonyms, such as children, kids, youngsters,
rug rats, and so forth in American English. One of our
consultants offered 8 Spanish variants. Although niños
was the first response of more than half (52%) of the 320
NMCOSS respondents, numerous other basic variants
occurred, most appearing also in diminutive form (which
are included with the basic form in all the statistics cited
here except for a special case to be discussed in the next
two paragraphs). There were such common responses as
chamacos (8% of first choices), chavalos (3%), chicos (3%),
and muchachos (13%) as well as occasional mentions of
criaturas, escuincles, jóvenes, mocosos, and others.
But there are 2 other variants of significant standing
that merit particular attention here. Map 8-2 shows that
the special labels muchitos and plebe are strongly diag-
nostic of the Traditional Spanish region. The following
examples illustrate the use of these terms:
(8-1) Esque le dijo Mano Cacahuate que si de ónde
había venido el muchito ese. ‘They say Mano
Cacahuate asked her where that little boy had
come from.’ (interview 291)
(8-2) Cuando mi nuera se enfermó del último
muchito, ella murió de eso. ‘When my
daughter-in-law got pregnant with her last
child, she died of that.’ (interview 236)
(8-3) El cuento es que no aguantó muncho allá
porque ella tenía plebe poco grandecita y eran
muy atroces. ‘The story is that he didn’t last
long there because she had children who
were older and they were very mischievous.’
(interview 187)
(8-4) Alineaban la plebe cuando sonaba la campana
de ricés. ‘They would line up the kids when the
bell for recess rang.’ (interview 273)
Muchitos, with 39 first choices (12%) ranks third in
frequency after niños/niñitos and muchachos/muchachi-
tos. It is transparently a derivative of the diminutive
muchachitos by loss of a syllable. A syllable-loss change
affecting a single word is a commonplace phenomenon
that philologists call “haplology.” It occurs in particular
in two adjacent syllables starting with the same conso-
nant, as is the case here where -cha- is dropped before
chapter eight
 8-1. ‘Bear’

El Nuevo México 125

 8-2. ‘Children’

126 chapter eight

-chi-. This new form muchitos appears to be a product
of rapid speech use of a high-frequency lexical item. It
is apparently unique to New Mexican Spanish. It is not
listed in either the DRAE or by Santamaría (1959). It also
does not occur as a noun in the CREA, where muchito
appears only as the diminutive of the adverbial use of
mucho ‘much, a lot.’
Plebe, on the other hand, represents a semantic change,
but for convenience will be treated at this point. Generally
in Spanish, la plebe refers to people of a less elevated social
class, the common people, like its cognate plebeian in
English. The DRAE includes only this social class kind of
definition. Plebe is not listed by Santamaría (1959).
In the NMCOSS, plebe turns up in fifth place in
frequency as the first choice of just 18 persons (6%),
and another 2 persons offered the diminutive plebecita.
However, this label was actually mentioned as first or
alternative choices by 94 consultants, representing 29% of
the 320 respondents for this item and lifting it into second
place after niños (57%) in the total count. Muchitos, on
the other hand, gained only 15 mentions other than first
choice. Why so many additional mentions for plebe? A
little idiosyncrasy of the data collection occurred because
a couple of interviewers were particularly interested in
this label and frequently prompted their consultants to
determine if they used it. We should point out that these
additional mentions of plebe and muchitos also show
up almost exclusively in the Traditional Spanish area
with only a few cases on the fringes of Border Spanish.
Incidentally, we elicited ‘Children’ in the plural instead of
the singular ‘child’ precisely to permit the appearance of
an inherently plural word known to be widely used in the
region. Plebe, like people in English, usually occurs with-
out the plural suffix but always has a plural reference, as
illustrated in example 8-3.
Other changes in form result from folk etymology,
when speakers substitute more meaningful elements for
a word or part of a word that is semantically opaque for
them, that is, that fail to clearly carry meaning for them.
Speakers regularly reanalyze the forms of words to make
them more semantically transparent, such as the child who
renders the Oh, tannenbaum of the Christmas song as Oh,
’tomic bomb, or those who refer to Alzheimer’s disease as
Old Timers’ disease. Or consider the following example:
English borrowed from Spanish a word for ‘dried meat,’
not the cecina used in New Mexican Spanish, but charque
or charqui (which Spanish had previously borrowed
from Quechua ch’arki). English speakers adapted char-
qui as a more meaningful form jerky, which is also some-
times further extended to jerked beef. Thus, many English
El Nuevo México
speakers make the false assumption that jerky is made by
jerking the meat to assist the drying process.
A good NMCOSS example of folk etymology is the
label for ‘Porcupine.’ In standard Spanish, the form is
puercoespín, a compound formed from puerco ‘pig’ and
a shortened form of espina or espino ‘spine, thorn.’ Thus,
a puercoespín is a ‘spiny pig’ (which is also of course the
etymological origin via French of the English word). Few
speakers of New Mexican Spanish, however, commonly
associate the word puerco with the notion of ‘pig.’ Three-
fourths (75%) of the NMCOSS consultants give marrano
as the preferred term for ‘Pig,’ and another 20% prefer
cochino. Only 9 people (2.6%) selected puerco (although
half of Lope Blanch’s Mora subjects did, 1990a, 79).
Instead, in New Mexican Spanish, puerco is used primar-
ily as an adjective meaning ‘dirty, filthy.’ The Río Puerco
east of Albuquerque is not ‘Pig River,’ as some might
think, but ‘Dirty River,’ or more loosely ‘Muddy River’
as Julyan (1998, 278) suggests in his book on New Mexico
place names. Consequently, the meaning of the first part
of the compound puercoespín became obscure. Why call
an animal ‘dirty thorn’?
But folk etymology comes to the rescue. Spanish
speakers had only to transpose two consonants of puerco,
the initial p and the c, to yield a more felicitous compound,
cuerpoespín, where cuerpo is the word for ‘body.’ ‘Spiny
body’! How good is that as a label for ‘Porcupine’?
Very good indeed for speakers of New Mexican
Spanish. Although nearly a quarter (23%) of our survey
participants could provide no response or only the
English word when presented the picture of a porcupine,
45% responded precisely with the folk-etymologized cuer-
poespín. Many others responded with acceptably close
variants such as the rapid-speech pronunciation of the
unstressed first part of the compound as corpo or of the
second part as espino or espina. Still others clearly aimed
for the cuerpoespín target but missed pretty seriously with
variants such as corpoesquín, cuercaspín, and cuesporpín.
If we put all of these variants together, nearly two-thirds
(65%) of our respondents (and in fact, fully 85% of those
who provided a Spanish response at all) favored the folk-
etymologized version.
In contrast, only 12 persons offered the standard vari-
ant puercoespín and another 8 the rapid speech porcoespín,
totaling 7% of the responses. The proportion increases to
10% if we include all the variants that might be considered
aimed toward the standard by virtue of having p as the
initial consonant, including forms such as porquespíno
and puerpoespín. Notice that this low response rate is in
spite of the fact that the form of the English word with
127
initial p might be expected to have some influence. In
fact, 1 person (a thirty-nine-year-old man from Santa Fe)
offered porquipino! As might be expected, we find that
those who offered the standard variant tended to be more
highly educated and to have enjoyed more years of formal
study of Spanish.
Map 8-3 shows the distribution of the princi-
pal responses for ‘Porcupine.’ For this display, we have
combined the 2 principal standard forms—puercoespín
and porcoespín—as well as the 4 principal folk etymologi-
cal forms that have a unified distribution—cuerpoespín,
corpoespín, cuerpespín, and corpespín. Notice that neither
the standard variant nor the folk etymology reveals any
geographical patterning. Standard forms associated with
education tend to always display a somewhat random
geographical distribution.
We have plotted separately on map 8-3 the 8 cases of
cuerpoespino because they are geographically restricted.
They are confined to the Border Spanish area. This distri-
bution of cuerpoespino and the fact that the nonstandard
cuerpoespín occurs solidly across the region suggest that the
folk form is common also in Mexico. Although the ALM
did not include this item and neither Santamaría (1959)
nor the DRAE make any mention of cuerpoespín or related
form, this folk etymology is actually used broadly across
the Spanish-speaking world in spite of being somewhat stig-
matized. For example, the CORDE includes a twentieth-
century document from Spain, a collection of popular
stories, that uses cuerpoespín, and Quezada Pacheco (1991)
reports the use of cuerpoespino in Costa Rica.
Another new form resulting from folk etymology
and that appears to be restricted to New Mexican Spanish
is the term for ‘Centipede.’ The standard Spanish word is
ciempiés, but cientopiés is also widely accepted. Like centi-
pede in English, these words are literally ‘hundred-feet.’
But unlike the English word, the meanings of the parts,
cien or ciento ‘hundred’ and pies ‘feet,’ are transparent to
most Spanish speakers around the world.
The NMCOSS finds 4 major basic forms for
‘Centipede,’ all occurring sometimes with, sometimes with-
out, a final s: ciempié (55 tokens, 16% of the total responses),
cintopié (69 tokens, 21%), cientopié (70 tokens, 21%), and the
folk etymology santopié (78 tokens, 24%). Now, why would
such a transparent compound be reanalyzed converting
the first element into santo ‘saint, holy’? Perhaps because
the meanings of the component parts were not so transpar-
ent to speakers of New Mexican Spanish after all. Several
clues suggest that this is the case.
First, in the NMCOSS region (and far beyond), the
most ordinary, everyday word for ‘foot’ (of any living
128
thing, including humans) is not pie, but pata. Of the
many different variants for ‘Centipede’ offered by our
consultants, there was not a single case of ciempatas
or cientopatas or other related form having pata as the
second element. By way of contrast, for example, ciempa-
tas makes a strong minority showing in the more remote
areas of Colombia (ALEC vol. 2, mapa 181). This absence
in the NMCOSS provides a bit of evidence, however
indirect, that the second element of the compound is a
little more opaque in meaning than might be suspected.
In contrast, 4 persons responded with a ‘thousand-legs’
variant, and 2 of these gave milpatas (versus 2 milpiés),
suggesting a more transparent semantics of ‘foot’ in asso-
ciation with mil ‘thousand.’
Second, in standard Spanish, ciempiés and cientopiés
invariably have the plural marking s on pie (even though
the compound is a singular noun, un ciempiés ‘one centi-
pede’). This agreement of the head noun with the plural
numeral in the compound word follows naturally from
the Spanish grammatical system. However, of the 4 major
forms surfacing in our survey, only the standard ciempiés
occurred more frequently (80% of the time) with that final
s. Two-thirds of the other 3 forms (147 of the 219 cases)—
and fully 78% of the santopié variant—were uttered with-
out the plural marking.
Moreover, for words ending in a stressed final
vowel (as with pie), it is very common in New Mexican
Spanish to form the plural in nonstandard fashion with
-ses rather than -s. For example, in a section of the inter-
view dealing explicitly with plurals, 55% of the NMCOSS
consultants gave mamases as the plural of mamá and 58%
gave papases as the plural of papá. However, only a hand-
ful of consultants produced -pieses as the second element
of the ‘Centipede’ compound (1 ciempieses, 1 cientopieses,
and 2 santopieses).
In brief, not only do most speakers seem not to
recognize the ‘foot’ element in this compound, but also
most seem not to recognize the ‘hundred’ element or the
notion of plurality either. Putting santo on the label for
such a curious animal might serve only to make the word
more compellingly memorable.
Map 8-4 displays the distributions of just 2 of the
principal variants. Although the folk etymology santopié
is the most frequently cited variant in the NMCOSS, Alvar
(2000, 281) documents that just 2 occurrences of this label
turned up among the 27 persons from New Mexico and
southern Colorado surveyed in that project, and Pedrero
(2002, 338) fails to mention the form in her analysis. The
map shows that the santopié forms are most prominent
in the Traditional Spanish area, but they extend notably
chapter eight
 8-3. ‘Porcupine’

El Nuevo México 129

into the southern Border Spanish region. However, we
have found no documentation of this form in Mexico.
‘Centipede’ was not included in the ALM survey and
Santamaría (1959) makes no mention of a santopié form.
It also does not show up in the ALEC map for ‘Centipede’
(vol. 2, mapa 181). Furthermore, there is no mention of
this label in the CREA or the CORDE. It appears to be
unique to New Mexican Spanish.
On the other hand, the ciempié forms are strongly
associated with Border Spanish and the mainstream
Mexican Spanish that this entails. The other 2 major vari-
ants, cientopié and cintopié, are distributed loosely across
the NMCOSS region and reveal no geographical cluster-
ing of interest.
Semantic Change
Some of the lexical innovations involve semantic exten-
sions—altering the meaning of a form that already
existed in Spanish. Sometimes this amounts to nothing
more than simply broadening the meaning of a word. An
example is the extension of the Nahuatlism papalote to
label the technological innovation ‘Windmill’ as we saw
in the previous chapter in connection with map 7-8.
Another good example is the use of ganso for ‘Turkey’
illustrated by map 4-2 in chapter 4. Both the bird and the
word were most assuredly brought to the New World by
the earliest colonists. For reasons shrouded in the mists
of unrecorded history, someone—perhaps in Mexico,
perhaps in New Mexico—extended the meaning of the
term to include that other large domesticated fowl, turkey,
and that semantic innovation certainly took firm root in
New Mexican soil.
A captivating case of the extension of meaning is the
use of espelma for ‘Earwax.’ A third (32%) of our consul-
tants could not produce a Spanish word for this matter.
For the rest, the most common responses were cerilla at
25% (which is by far the principal label in Mexico also)
and cera at 22% (mentioned by only a handful of persons
in Mexico). But 28 of the 314 NMCOSS persons queried
(9%) responded with the unique espelma form seen in the
following jocular example:
(8-5) Cuando comes el chile se te redite la espelma en
las orejas. ‘When you eat chile peppers, the wax
in your ears melts.’ (interview 53)
Similarly, 1 of the 4 persons that Lope Blanch (1990a, 83)
interviewed in Mora offered this term for ‘Earwax.’
Espelma is a slight modification of esperma (preferred
130
by 1 consultant), which is the Spanish word for ‘sperm.’ In
this case, the reference relates to products of the sperm
whale, specifically the waxy substance in the huge whale’s
head that was much sought after in earlier centuries for
commercial purposes. Santamaría (1959) reports that
espelma in Mexico, like the standard esperma, refers to
a candle made of that waxy substance. Cobos (2003) and
L. Trujillo (1983) both report that espelma also refers to
‘paraffin’ or ‘wax’ in New Mexican Spanish, a meaning
cited by a number of the NMCOSS consultants:
(8-6) Tenía yo una araña en el oído y me puso un
tubo de lino que tenía espelma en el oído; lo
prendió y me sacó el bicho del oído. ‘I had a
spider in my ear and she put a linen tube with
wax [an ear candle] in my ear; she lit it and
took the bug out of my ear.’ (interview 38)
The extension of espelma from ‘candle wax’ to ‘Ear-
wax’ is not a great leap. It is noteworthy, however, that
there was not a single occurrence of espelma for ‘Earwax’
in the Mexico survey (mapa 724).
Another kind of broadening of meaning is where the
label for a specific entity (the subordinate label) comes
to be used to refer to the class of entities (the superordi-
nate label). The general word for ‘Nuts,’ which was elicited
with a picture of a bowl of mixed nuts, provides an exam-
ple. The superordinate term in most Spanish dialects is
nueces, and this was the most common response in our
survey, preferred by 154 of the 333 respondents (46%). But
96 of our consultants (fully 29%) preferred to label ‘Nuts’
as almendras (the total number includes 6 cases of almien-
dras), illustrated in example 8-7.
(8-7) Pa’ Crismes pus agarrábanos como un presente y
lo demás eran almendras o dulces, naranjas, pero
no había los Crismes que hay ora, tanto parquete.
‘For Christmas we would get just one present
and the rest was nuts or sweets, oranges, but
there weren’t Christmases like there are now, so
many packages.’ (interview 201)
Now, generally in Spanish almendras is the term for
‘almonds,’ a specific kind of nut. Map 8-5 shows that
this generalization of almendras to superordinate status
is spread across the Traditional Spanish territory, but is
especially prominent north of Albuquerque. Reflecting
this Northerner usage, Cobos (2003) comments explic-
itly, “The term almendras in NM-CO Spanish refers to all
kinds of nuts except peanuts.”
chapter eight
 8-4. ‘Centipede’

El Nuevo México 131

 8-5. ‘Nuts’

132 chapter eight

 The reason for the expanded meaning of almendras
is not obvious to us. Perhaps playing a role is the fact
that nuez is also the word for ‘nutmeg’ in New Mexican
Spanish (Cobos 2003), or that nuez for many speakers
here refers specifically to ‘pecans,’ a narrowing of mean-
ing. But whatever the reason, such semantic drift is a
common occurrence in language change. A similar thing,
for example, happened in English whereby dog, once the
label for the male canine, came to be the general term,
replacing hound (compare the German word for ‘dog,’
hund, that we see in the name of the “weenie dog,” dachs-
hund), and hound in turn actually suffered a narrowing
of meaning.
Our survey also found 2 other terms for ‘Nuts’ that
arise from a broadening of meaning. The Nahuatlism
cacahuate and the Anglicism pinate are more gener-
ally used for reference to ‘Peanut’ (treated in chapter 10,
map 10-8). Nevertheless, 32 consultants promoted caca-
huates to superordinate status and 23 chose pinates. Map
8-5 shows that the pinates variant occupies a portion of
the Traditional Spanish area more restricted than that of
almendras. Cacahuates for ‘Nuts’ displays a more diffuse
distribution around the NMCOSS area but is generally
absent from the Traditional Spanish core area where
almendras and pinates dominate.
The ‘Nuts’ variable, then, seems to represent a
remarkable display of independent development in New
Mexican Spanish with 3 different terms upgraded from
subordinate status to superordinate status. This upgrade
may have taken place long ago for almendras, but the
upgrades of cacahuates and pinates is surely a quite recent
phenomenon.
Very similar to almendras in elevation to superordi-
nate status as well as in geographical distribution is the
adoption of trucha as the general term for any kind of
‘Fish.’ In most of the Spanish-speaking world, this word
has a much narrower meaning, referring to a particular
kind of fish, specifically a ‘trout.’ In standard Spanish, the
general word for fish is pez or pescado (the latter prescrip-
tively reserved for a caught, edible fish).
Map 8-6 shows that the NMCOSS consultants used
all 3 terms to identify the picture of a live and swimming
perch-like fish quite distinct from a trout. The majority
of the 337 respondents (205 persons, 61%) prefer the stan-
dard Spanish form pescado. It is used widely and is prac-
tically the only form that occurs in the southern half of
the region.
Nevertheless, the extended meaning for trucha is the
preference of over a third (35%) of our consultants. The map
reveals this use of trucha to be a prominent characteristic
El Nuevo México
of northern Traditional Spanish, particularly in rural
areas. The data provided by Alvar (2000, 283) and Pedrero
(2002, 319, 339) also find trucha only in northern New
Mexico, apparently with 7 tokens for the live version and
11 for the caught version. It is not difficult to speculate how
this semantic extension took place. Trout are the common
fish in the rivers and streams of northern New Mexico and
southern Colorado. We can readily imagine that children
growing up where trucha was the only form heard would
begin to apply this word to all fishes.
The standardly appropriate pez for reference to this
live fish hardly occurs at all. Alvar reports not a single
case of pez in the New Mexico and Colorado area. Only 13
of the NMCOSS consultants (4%) offered this label. There
was a clear tendency for those persons to be more highly
educated and to have had more formal study of Spanish
in the classroom. It needs to be mentioned that pez and
pescado are closely related words deriving from the Latin
word for ‘fish,’ piscis. Pescado is a noun based on the past
participle of the verb pescar ‘to fish, to catch’ and thus
can mean literally the ‘fished, caught’ thing (whence the
prescriptive restriction of pescado to the edible fish that is
caught, not one freely swimming about).
It happens that we also solicited the term preferred
for the activity ‘To fish.’ Two-thirds of the 329 consultants
selected the bare verb pescar (e.g., está pescando ‘he’s fish-
ing’). But 68 people (21%) offered the created verb truc-
hear, illustrating yet another independently developed
form. Truchear adheres to the usual method of adding
-ear to a noun root to create the verb infinitive. It needs
to be pointed out, however, that when -ear is attached
to verb roots ending in ch (or sh in English borrowings
such as push), the e is absorbed by the palatal consonant
and typically not audible unless the stress falls on the e.
To illustrate, a forty-one-year-old woman (interview 25)
from Llano Quemado, New Mexico, produced the follow-
ing utterances at different points in the interview:
(8-8) Nojotros nos poníamos a truchear (phonetically
[tručár]). ‘We would set to fishing.’
(8-9) Yo trucheo (phonetically [tručéo]). ‘I fish.’
Another 24 persons preferred to include the noun
trucha in their description of the activity ‘To fish.’ The
usual phrasing is pescar trucha, but we also received
andar en la trucha, cazar trucha, and ir a la trucha. The
use of truchear and verbal phrases constructed with
trucha is restricted to rural areas in the northern half of
the NMCOSS territory, a geographical distribution like
that seen for the noun trucha in map 8-6.
133
 8-6. ‘Fish’

134 chapter eight

 Our elicitation of the term for ‘Throw rug’ (pictured
as a bath mat in the bathroom) reveals the use of 2 seman-
tic extensions, 2 labels used with very different meanings
elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. Nearly half (44%)
of the 319 NMCOSS consultants questioned prefer the term
piso for ‘Throw rug,’ with nearly 1 in 5 of these responses
(24 cases) being the diminutive pisito. Another 29% prefer
the term jerga, realized almost half the time in diminutive
form as jerguita (44 cases). Examples 8-10 and 8-11 provide
clear attestations of this usage of the 2 terms:
(8-10) Metíanos [en una cuilta] hasta un piso de
esos del suelo, estando bien viejito. Metía uno
adentro y le ponía forro. ‘[Inside a quilt] we
would even put one of those floor rugs, if it
was real old. You’d put one inside and put on a
covering.’ (interview 219)
(8-11) Agarré el vacuum sweeper . . . y cuando jalé,
estaba la olla con agua ahi. Volqué toda la agua
en esta jerga, oh, y tuve que agarrar garras y
garras pa’ soak it up. ‘I grabbed the vacuum
sweeper . . . and when I pulled it, the bucket of
water was there. I spilled all the water on this
rug, oh, and I had to get rags and rags to soak it
up.’ (interview 114)
In standard Spanish, piso generally has meanings
that cover the two senses of English ‘floor,’ that is, (1) a
flat surface intended to be walked on in any construction
(for which suelo, as seen in example 8-10, is perhaps the
more common label in New Mexican Spanish), and (2) a
level of a multitiered building (which some New Mexican
Spanish speakers call a vivienda). However, in some vari-
eties of Spanish, piso also means a small cloth, usually one
placed for decorative effect on a table or mantel. It is not
difficult to see how this piso label might be extended to
refer to a small cloth placed underfoot.
Jerga in standard Spanish also refers to a kind of
cloth, usually coarse and of little value. For some speak-
ers it is a ‘saddle blanket’ (typically called colcha, suba-
dero, or sudadero in the NMCOSS region), and for some
it is a ‘rag’ (garra being the usual term here, as example
8-11 illustrates). Again, the extension of meaning to refer
to a woven fabric crude enough to place on the floor and
actually walk on seems not a great stretch. Jerga is also the
general Spanish term for ‘slang’ or ‘jargon,’ but that seems
irrelevant for the present discussion. Map 8-7 demon-
strates how comprehensively these 2 terms carpet the
Traditional Spanish territory. And how interchangeably
they occur, both forms surfacing as first choices in almost
El Nuevo México
all communities. In fact, 19 consultants mentioned both
forms as appropriate labels for ‘Throw rug.’
But map 8-7 depicts the distributions of 3 addi-
tional labels, all characteristic of Border Spanish. The
standard Spanish label tapete comes in a distant third in
frequency, preferred by just 46 of our consultants (14%).
In Los Angeles, in contrast, tapete is the overwhelmingly
preferred label (at least as elicited there for a ‘door mat’
inside the front door), according to Domínguez (1983). A
still more widely used standard Spanish term, alfombra,
was offered by just 21 persons (7%) in our survey. It too
occurs almost exclusively in the Border Spanish areas.
And finally, though the preferred choice of only 5 consul-
tants, the label carpeta displays a distribution tightly
restricted to southeastern New Mexico, with 1 case in the
Las Cruces area.
The mention of alfombra takes us to a related vari-
able in our survey, ‘Carpet,’ the stimulus for which was
wall-to-wall carpeting in a living room. In this case, the
Border Spanish response is overwhelmingly alfombra,
and there is considerable spillover of this label into the
Traditional Spanish region (yielding a total of 88 prefer-
ences, 26%). Also confined mostly to Border Spanish areas
are 23 responses of carpeta, a word that in Spanish gener-
ally refers to a ‘file’ or ‘folder’ but whose meaning has been
extended under the influence of the English word.
The terms for ‘Carpet’ that characterize the Traditional
Spanish area are again jerga and piso. But showing an
important difference from the ‘Throw rug’ findings, jerga
was favored by 174 persons (52%) while piso was favored by
just 28 persons (8%). The majority semantic view seems to
be that jerga refers to a large floor covering and piso to a
small one. Nevertheless, both sizes of rug may be called a
jerga by some speakers and piso by others.
Terms for ‘Safety pin’ vary widely in Spanish. In New
Mexican Spanish, however, there is considerable unifor-
mity of opinion. Almost three-quarters (72%) of the
325 respondents use the term broche, as do all 4 of Lope
Blanch’s Mora subjects (1990a, 95). For Spanish speakers
elsewhere, broche is usually a decorative clasp, a brooch,
though there is a lot of variation in exactly what this term
refers to. That variation is also manifest in New Mexican
Spanish. Cobos reports the use of broche for “brooch;
safety pin; a snap, as on a harness” (2003, 32). L. Trujillo
(1983) adds the meanings ‘hook and eye’ and ‘clothespin.’
We have also had responses of broche for ‘Clothespin’ as
well as for ‘Hairpin’ and ‘Bobby pin.’ But the strongest
agreement on the use of broche in the NMCOSS is with
reference to the ordinary ‘Safety pin.’ Map 8-8 shows how
strongly the term broche dominates for ‘Safety pin’ in
135
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136 chapter eight

New Mexican Spanish. It shows up particularly strongly
in the Traditional Spanish area, but it also makes a signif-
icant appearance in the Border Spanish areas.
There are 2 quite minor forms that are included on
this map because of their restricted distributions in rural
Traditional Spanish areas north of Santa Fe. Fistol is a relic
form cited by just 8 persons, mostly elderly. This is an old
Spanish word documented from 1617 in the CORDE. The
CREA cites 7 modern examples, all coming from Mexico,
where the meaning seems consistently to be ‘tie tack,’ the
adornment for a man’s tie. The use of fistol for ‘Safety pin’
seems to be unique to New Mexican Spanish.
The other minor form is tenaza or its diminutive
variant tenacita. Only 9 persons offered this term for
‘Safety pin.’ Tenaza (usually in plural form, tenazas) is the
common word for ‘pliers’ in New Mexican Spanish. Its
use with the meaning ‘Safety pin’ is so tightly constrained
geographically to suggest a small subdialect region along
the Chama River.
Map 8-8 indicates that there is another major variant
for ‘Safety pin’: seguro, the choice of 59 consultants (18%).
We see that this term is characteristic of Border Spanish.
Not surprisingly, then, it is also the heavily dominant
term for ‘Safety pin’ across Mexico (ALM mapa 901). The
DRAE, however, fails to acknowledge this usage. Broche
occurs in Mexico but is somewhat rare, reported by
only 15 or so respondents in the ALM, though Mendoza
Guerrero (2002, 125–26) reports that 5 of his 60 consul-
tants mentioned this label. Neither fistol nor tenaza show
up on ALM mapa 901. But there is 1 other ‘Safety pin’
term that unites Mexican and New Mexican Spanish: the
standard term imperdible was never mentioned in the
NMCOSS and is exceedingly rare in the ALM survey.
Other expansions of meaning are of more recent
vintage. A political boundary that reduced interchange
with the rest of the Spanish-speaking world was erected
in the middle of the nineteenth century just as the reper-
cussions of industrialization were beginning to be felt
in the new U.S. Southwest. As the Spanish language
elsewhere settled on terminology for the technological
advances, New Mexican Spanish was left pretty much to
its own devices. Many new terms, such as traque for ‘rail-
road’ and ‘train tracks,’ were simply taken from the clos-
est available source, English; we postpone dealing with
the incorporation of Anglicisms until chapter 10. Many
adaptations, however, were carried out using the creative
possibilities of the mother tongue.
Automobiles were one such innovation that appeared
after New Mexico and Colorado became a part of the
United States. New Mexican Spanish, like much of
El Nuevo México
American Spanish, simply extended the meaning of the
word for ‘cart’ or ‘wagon,’ carro, to cover this new means
of transportation. But how to describe the activity of the
person who handled this new vehicle, the variable ‘Drive’?
Standard Spanish settled on “managing” the car, manejar.
The solution adopted in Traditional Spanish was to extend
the meaning of the word used to keep a group of animals
moving, arrear. Notice that the same solution was reached
in English. Perhaps independently, but who knows?
A slight majority (54%) of 318 NMCOSS consultants
responded with the standard Spanish term for ‘Drive.’
However, manejar was more frequently realized as manijar,
a more colloquial pronunciation. We tallied 104 preferences
for manijar and 67 for manejar. The innovative arrear has
a very prominent showing as the preference of 133 persons
(42%). Map 8-9 shows that arrear is particularly manifest
in the Traditional Spanish area, suggesting that it was once
the consensus norm in New Mexican Spanish. However,
manejar, particularly in its modified form manijar, is also
well represented in Traditional Spanish.
In contrast, arrear is sparsely represented (though far
from absent) in the areas of more recent Mexican immi-
gration, where the standard-based solutions dominate.
It is interesting to observe, however, that the standard
manejar and the more colloquial manijar are equally
represented in the Border Spanish regions. This find-
ing suggests that the colloquial variant is of common
currency in Mexico, though regrettably the ALM did not
include the ‘Drive’ variable. Also of interest is the fact that
neither manejar nor manijar exhibit any significant asso-
ciations with social variables such as age and education.
That is, the independent development arrear seems to be
holding steady in the NMCOSS region without losing
ground across the generations or under increasing expo-
sure to standard Spanish. Such stability is quite unusual
for nonstandard words in New Mexican Spanish.
Lexical Compounds
Altering the meaning of an existing word is one common
means of independent lexical development. Another
common strategy involves compounding, putting
together two or more existing words to yield a combined
meaning distinct from the meaning of the individual
words. Thus, the two-word compound cell phone was
created to label a new phenomenon, which coinciden-
tally led to the creation of another compound, landline
to contrastively label the older phenomenon. Similarly,
the compound gallina de la tierra was created very early
in the New World to refer to a new entity, a ‘Turkey.’ This
137
 8-8. ‘Safety pin’

138 chapter eight

 8-9. ‘Drive’

El Nuevo México 139

resulted in the need for a contrastive gallina de Castilla
for ‘chicken’ in order to be clear in certain situations,
such as in the following excerpt from Alonso de Zurita’s
1585 Relación de los señores de la Nueva España (as docu-
mented in the CORDE):
(8-12) mandar que cada un pueblo dé tanta cantidad
de gallinas de la tierra, y tanta de gallinas de
Castilla, y no por cabezas, sino que se haga el
repartimiento de ellas conforme a la gente que
en ella hay, de manera que a cada casado salga
una gallina de la tierra, y el viudo o soltero
una de Castilla que vale la mitad menos. ‘to
order that each village give a certain amount
of turkeys and a certain amount of chickens,
and not per person, but that the distribution be
done according to the people who live therein,
so that from each married man comes a turkey,
and from a widower or bachelor a chicken,
which is worth half as much.’ (our translation)
A simple case of the formation of a new compound
word in New Mexican Spanish is a variant label for ‘Bed.’
In olden days in this territory, one’s bed, cama, would be
directly on the floor or quite commonly on a raised adobe
“shelf” built out from the wall. When a stand-alone bed
came along, this very different entity was referred to as
a cama-alta ‘high bed,’ usually written as pronounced,
camalta. The use of this compound is considered signif-
icant enough to be reported in the dictionaries of both
Cobos (2003) and L. Trujillo (1983). When presented
a picture of a typical modern bed, the vast majority of
the NMCOSS consultants (272 of 319, 85%) identified it
as a cama. However, 41 persons (13%) chose to label it a
camalta. These persons are scattered across the rural
areas of Traditional Spanish and notably absent from the
Border Spanish areas and the cities (see map 8-10). Alvar
(2000, 214) documents camalta for speakers in 9 of 12
New Mexico communities, all north of Albuquerque.
The use of camalta marks a person as a speaker of
New Mexican Spanish, and many seem to be aware that
cama is the “correct” term. Indeed, all of our consultants
seem to know and use the standard form cama for refer-
ence in general to the sleeping place. We may guess that
the novel compound word is more widely used in settings
of a more familiar nature than our interview. The fact that
20% of those age sixty-five and older chose camalta while
only 6% of those age forty or younger did so supports that
assumption and suggests that the use of the nonstandard
term is dying out.
140
An innovative compound form for the f lying
mammal ‘Bat’ developed in New Mexican Spanish. The
word for ‘Bat’ in general Spanish is murciélago. This word
is itself an old, old compound from Latin, murciégalo,
the two parts originally translatable as ‘blind mouse.’
However, the componential semantics of the word is now
inaccessible to most Spanish speakers because of two
changes over time. On the one hand, the mur element
meaning ‘mouse’ was lost from Spanish many centu-
ries ago—replaced bafflingly by ratón, the augmentative
of rata ‘rat.’ A mouse is a big rat? No one should believe
that weirdness is restricted to nonstandard dialects. On
the other hand, the easy perceptibility of ciego ‘blind’
in the original form has been blocked by the metathesis
that has yielded the now standard form. (Metathesis is a
common linguistic change in form involving the switch-
ing of sounds between syllables; some metatheses often
heard in New Mexican Spanish are estógamo for estómago
‘Stomach,’ idomia for idioma ‘Language,’ pader for pared
‘wall,’ probe for pobre ‘Poor,’ and reditir for derretir
‘Melt’—see example 8-5.)
Despite the lack of semantic transparency, this long
word murciélago endures as the standard word for ‘Bat’
throughout the Spanish-speaking world. But to make
matters more mysterious, also widespread is the nonstan-
dard variant murciégalo. Is this variant a retention of the
original form, or perhaps a new metathesis, reversing the
effect of the first metathesis? It is impossible to determine.
It is unclear to us why the speakers of Traditional
Spanish should have felt the need to create a new label, and
an even longer label, for this creature that is so common
in the area. Maybe there was a collective memory lapse
of long duration. Whatever the cause, the result was a
new term created by compounding, ratón volador, liter-
ally ‘flying mouse’ (identical to the German solution of
Fledermaus). Map 8-11 shows that this form is clearly the
majority preference in Traditional Spanish. It is cited in
both the Cobos 2003 and the L. Trujillo 1983 dictionaries,
and 3 of Lope Blanch’s 4 subjects from Mora also offered
this response (1990a, 76). Overall, it accounts for 166 (fully
48%) of the 343 NMCOSS responses for this item.
This new compound is a pronounced dialect marker
for Traditional Spanish. The 13 cases of ratón volador
documented by Alvar (2000, 282) and Pedrero (2002,
346–47) occur only in the NMCOSS region and not in the
other three states. The norm elsewhere in the Southwest
is murciélago (or some variant thereof), as confirmed also
in the Lope Blanch survey (1990a). Murciélago also is the
usual form in Mexico, documented in mapa 618 of the
ALM. The independently developed ratón volador does
chapter eight
 8-10. ‘Bed’

El Nuevo México 141

 8-11. ‘Bat’

142 chapter eight

not appear at all in that atlas (though there are sporadic
occurrences of ratón viejo ‘old mouse’ and ratón ciego
‘blind mouse’ in central Mexico), nor does it occur in
the more fine-grained study of the state of Sinaloa by
Mendoza Guerrero (2002, 69–71).
As is to be expected, then, map 8-11 reveals that in
New Mexican Spanish, the standard form, with or with-
out metathesis, is found mainly in the Border Spanish
areas: in the south, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and
along the Arkansas River in Colorado. Combined on this
map are the 48 cases of murciélago and the 17 cases of the
new metathesis or perhaps retention murciégalo, which
account for just 19% of the NMCOSS responses.
A third competing option that is almost as promi-
nent (15%) as the murciélago forms is to just make use of
the English word, usually pronounced as a spontaneous
borrowing with English phonetics, bat, and occasionally
as a fully integrated bate (10 cases). The English option
shows no geographical patterning and is excluded from
map 8-11. It seems to be gaining ground in the speech of
younger persons.
A particularly intriguing case that seems to represent
independent development in New Mexican Spanish is the
most common label for ‘Sty’ (of the eye). Chile de perro is
a compound that might be literally if grossly translated as
‘dog pepper.’ Pedrero’s analysis (2002, 27) indicates 12 cases
of this “semantic creation,” and Alvar (2000, 187) confirms
that they occur only in the NMCOSS area. Lope Blanch,
too, finds only chile de perro in his Mora sample and no
cases among his subjects in the other three Southwest
states (1990a, 82). The term is not listed in Santamaría’s
Diccionario de mexicanismos (1959) except as the name of a
plant, and not surprisingly it is not recorded in the DRAE
or in Corominas’s Diccionario crítico etimológico de la
lengua castellana (1954). No such variant for ‘Sty’ is docu-
mented in the ALM (mapa 717), which shows perrilla to be
the overwhelmingly preferred term in Mexico, as it is in
Texas according to Alvar (2000).
Map 8-12 demonstrates the prominence of the imag-
inative compound in New Mexican Spanish and its
universally preferred status in the Traditional Spanish
area. It was the first response of 48% of the 324 respon-
dents—an especially significant proportion consider-
ing that one-fourth could only provide the English word
(13 cases) or no response at all (66 cases). An interesting
comparison is that, according to the analysis provided by
Pedrero (2002), over a third of Alvar’s Southwest sample
also failed to provide a response.
For the display on map 8-12, we have combined
El Nuevo México
3 variants of the compound: the most common form,
chile de perro (90 preferences), the diminutive chilito de
perro (34 preferences), and the apparently rapid speech
form chile perro (30 preferences). Only rapid speech forms
are provided in L. Trujillo (1983), chile perro, and Cobos,
chile ‘e perro in the 1983 edition but unfortunately omit-
ted from the 2003 edition. Not included on the map are
several such delightful near misses as chilito de puerco,
chulo de perro, chile cayote, and ojito de perro.
The origin of the label is a mystery. Many consul-
tants expressed fascination and curiosity upon reporting
a term they considered humorous. A sixty-six-year-old
woman from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, gave
a cause-and-effect explanation given to children that was
repeated by quite a few others concerning chile de perro:
(8-13) Si ya vías un perro haciendo su negocio, te
salía uno. ‘If you were to watch a dog doing its
business, you’d get one.’ (interview 342)
Which came first, the label or the warning? We don’t
know. But it seems likely that there is some connection to
the label considered next.
The use of perrilla for ‘Sty’ was reported by only 20
persons (6%), but its distribution is significant. Map 8-12
makes clear that it is restricted to the Border Spanish
areas. The DRAE includes this word as a Mexican term,
and indeed the ALM (mapa 717) shows perrilla to be
the preferred label there, overwhelmingly so across the
northern two-thirds of the country. The DRAE offers the
speculation that it is derived from perlilla ‘little pearl,’ but
that seems quite a stretch with regard to form if not for
meaning. It happens, however, that perrilla is a dimin-
utive form of perra ‘female dog, bitch.’ The occurrence
of the ‘dog’ reference in the labels in Mexican and New
Mexican Spanish, and apparently only in these dialects,
seems more than accidental.
Nearly twice as prevalent as perrilla in our survey
is the occurrence of grano and its diminutive granito,
offered by 40 persons (12%). In Mexico, a dozen or so
persons along the northwest coast also reported the use of
grano. But in the NMCOSS, the grano responses show no
regional pattern; they are scattered very much at random
across the region and therefore are not presented on the
map. We suspect that the elevated proportion of this label
in our survey is due to the fact that the none-too-clear
picture was often supplemented with the oral explana-
tion, Un granito que sale en el ojo (‘A pimple that erupts
by your eye’).
143
 8-12. ‘Sty’

144 chapter eight

 Grammatical and Phonological Change
Traditional Spanish also manifests a variety of gram-
matical and phonological phenomena that may repre-
sent independent developments. None of the cases that
we mention in the following paragraphs, however, is
unique to New Mexican Spanish. In fact, as Penny notes,
“With the exception of lexical innovations . . . there are
exceedingly few features observed in American Spanish
which do not also belong to some variety or varieties of
Peninsular Spanish, and which are therefore likely to have
their origins in Spain” (2000, 136–37).
A feature that is highly characteristic of this region
is the placement of stress on the antepenultimate (third
from the last) syllable in first person plural forms of the
present subjunctive mood instead of on the penultimate
(next to last) syllable as in standard Spanish. For example,
it is very common to hear in New Mexican Spanish pres-
ent subjunctive verb forms such as:
(8-14) háblemos ‘(that) we talk’ versus standard
hablemos
cómamos ‘(that) we eat’ versus standard comamos
sálgamos ‘(that) we go out’ versus standard
salgamos
It is unlikely that this stress pattern is a grammatical
innovation that arose independently in this region. Alvar
(2000, 380–81) indicates, with evidence from 7 differ-
ent verbs, that it occurs in all five of the Southwest states
where he collected data. It is perhaps an archaism since
Buesa and Enguita (1992, 201) point out its occurrence in
western Spain as well as elsewhere in the Americas.
Another construction that may have developed inde-
pendently is the use of -nos instead of -mos as the first
person plural verbal suffix. Although this substitution
occurs in many other areas (see, for example, Quesada
Pacheco 2000, 101), it has been extended in New Mexican
Spanish to all verb forms having antepenultimate stress,
including the just-mentioned present subjunctive. All 7
of the verbs in present subjunctive in Alvar’s data show
some use of -nos, mostly in the NMCOSS area, but there
are also some cases in Texas and Louisiana. To exemplify
with all the antepenultimate stress forms of 1 verb:
(8-15) háblenos ‘(that) we talk’ (present subjunctive)
versus standard hablemos
habláranos ‘(that) we talked’ (past subjunctive)
versus standard habláramos
hablábanos ‘we were talking’ (imperfect) versus
standard hablábamos
El Nuevo México
hablaríanos ‘we would talk’ (conditional) versus
standard hablaríamos
A couple of examples from the speech of our consultants
illustrate the pervasiveness of the phenomenon:
(8-16) En la escuela, fíjese, yo me acuerdo
cuando—si hablábanos español cuando
salíanos a recess, nos daban una cubeta pa’
que levantáranos piedras, pa’ quitar las piedras
del playground. ‘At school, listen, I remember
when—if we would speak Spanish when we
went out for recess, they would give us a bucket
to pick up rocks, to clear the rocks off the
playground.’ (interview 336)
(8-17) Si no lo aprendíanos, no pudríanos hablar con
ella. ‘If we hadn’t learned it, we wouldn’t have
been able to talk with her [the grandmother].’
(interview 343)
(8-18) Los castigaban si hablábanos en español.
‘They would punish us if we spoke Spanish.’
(interview 48)
This last example illustrates another grammati-
cal phenomenon—the use of los for nos—that conceiv-
ably could have arisen independently in New Mexican
Spanish even though it occurs in many other Spanish
dialects (see, for example, Kany 1951, 100–101). The first
person plural clitic pronoun that accompanies the verb
and corresponds to direct and indirect objects is nos in
most varieties of Spanish. In New Mexican Spanish rapid
speech this pronoun is often heard as los, which happens
to also be the third person singular direct object clitic
pronoun. A couple of additional examples:
(8-19) Ella los hablaba en español. ‘She would talk to
us in Spanish.’ (interview 344)
(8-20) A nosotros no los gustaba. ‘We didn’t like it.’
(interview 48)
Note, then, that example 8-18 is potentially ambiguous,
having also the meaning ‘They would punish them if we
spoke Spanish.’ But the larger context in which it occurs
(not to mention the inferential probability!) makes the
intended meaning absolutely clear. In fact, the intended
meaning of the merged form is almost always transparent
in context and rarely produces any communicative confu-
sion. For example, the meaning of example 8-19 is clear
because the pronoun would have to be the indirect object
clitic les, not los, for reference to ‘them,’ and example 8-20
145
yields no possibility for ambiguity because of the redun-
dant emphatic pronoun nosotros ‘we, us.’
A grammatical innovation that is perhaps most likely
to represent independent development in New Mexican
Spanish is the generalization of the truncated form of
the verb haber ‘have’ that occurs in the present-perfect
construction. The ha- root of the second and third persons
(tú has comido ‘you have eaten,’ ella ha comido ‘she has
eaten’) is extended to the first persons for many speakers
in our survey:
(8-21) yo ha comido ‘I have eaten’ (standard yo
he comido)
nosotros hamos comido ‘we have eaten’ (standard
nosotros hemos comido)
Following are a few examples of this regularization
extracted from conversations during the NMCOSS
interviews:
(8-22) Todo esto que hamos hablado, que sí los ha
oído. ‘All of this that we’ve talked about, why
yes I’ve heard them.’ (interview 269)
(8-23) Yo no los ha visto aquí. ‘I haven’t seen them
here.’ (interview 300)
(8-24) Yo ha sido muy suertudo. ‘I have been a very
lucky guy.’ (interview 308)
(8-25) Aquí ha vivido toda mi vida. ‘I’ve lived here
all my life.’ (interview 317)
Although the grammatical phenomena illustrated in
examples 8-14 to 8-20 were not specifically elicited in our
survey, the first person uses of haber were indeed included.
They were elicited by asking the consultant to give full
sentence negative responses to sentences like ¿Ha visto
usted a Juan? ‘Have you seen John?’ and ¿Han visto ustedes
a Juan? ‘Have you (plural) seen John?’ Now, the natural
negative response to such questions in ordinary conversa-
tion is simply, ‘No.’ Requiring the respondents to give full
sentences (e.g., No, no lo he visto) creates a test-like situa-
tion in which they can be expected to adopt whatever they
may consider their “best” linguistic behavior. Even so, the
results demonstrate that these innovative forms are widely
used: 48% of the NMCOSS consultants used the innova-
tive ha instead of standard he, and 38% employed hamos
instead of hemos. Map 8-13 for ‘I have’ shows that innova-
tive first person singular ha occurs across the NMCOSS
territory. A map for the plural forms (not presented here)
displays the same broad distribution.
146
Although only the plural form was included in the
Atlas lingüístico de México, it is striking to find not a single
instance of hamos documented there (mapa 591). Does this
confirm that ha and hamos are truly independent devel-
opments in New Mexican Spanish? No, not necessarily.
We know that these generalized forms occur in colloquial
speech elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world (e.g., in
El Salvador), so again we may be dealing with some sort
of archaism.
The evidence from an examination of social factors,
however, indicates that these innovative forms appear to
be a fairly recent development in New Mexican Spanish
that is gaining strength over time. For example, while only
a third (32%) of speakers age sixty-five and older report
use of ha for he, nearly two-thirds (63%) of those age forty
and younger do so. Moreover, this grammatical variable
is also associated with educational variables. For example,
only 37% of those who had taken three or more courses
in Spanish used ha for ‘I have,’ but 54% of those who had
no formal Spanish study did so. That is, we find that the
use of innovative ha and hamos is favored by younger
people and disfavored by the more educated. But there is a
confounding interaction between these social factors since
it is precisely the younger consultants who tend to be more
highly educated.
A two-way cross-tabulation incorporating both social
variables can sort out these contradictory influences.
Table 8-1 shows the results of such a cross-tabulation for
the innovative ha, grouping the consultants into three age
groups and four levels of formal study of Spanish. We see
that within each age group there is a trend toward declin-
ing use of first person ha with more coursework in Spanish.
But ha use by even the least Spanish-educated among the
oldest speakers (45%) never rises to the level of the youngest
speakers having three or more Spanish courses (53%). And
over three-fourths (77%) of the youngest age group who
have never taken a course in Spanish prefer the innovative
ha. Thus, if we completely remove the standardizing influ-
ence of classroom Spanish, we find a strong increase in the
use of ha across the generations, from 45% to 77%.
Education in general appears to have an even greater
standardizing influence, as table 8-2 indicates. We see the
same overall pattern as that manifested in table 8-1. But
for those who did not complete high school, there is an
exceptionally strong increase in preference for ha across
the generations, from just 41% of the oldest generation to
fully 100% of the youngest generation.
The influences of formal Spanish and education on
the use of first person plural hamos closely parallel the
chapter eight
 8-13. ‘I have’

El Nuevo México 147

 Table 8-1. Use of first person ha by age and Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
Age 15–40
No courses 76.9
1 course 64.7
2 courses 66.7
3 or more courses 53.1
Table 8-2. Use of first person ha by age and Years of education (percentages)
Age 15–40
11 years or fewer 100.0
12 years 88.2
13–15 years 53.8
16 or more years 50.0
results for first person singular ha. These findings strongly
support the conclusion that these two grammatical gener-
alizations are independent developments in New Mexican
Spanish that may have taken root rather recently, perhaps
within the past century or so, and that assuredly are now
expanding in use.
In the realm of phonology, it is still more difficult
to support a claim that an observed phenomenon arose
independently. However, there are at least three features
of Traditional New Mexican Spanish that may be tenta-
tively discussed as innovations in that they are not typi-
cal of Mexican Spanish. First, many speakers of New
Mexican Spanish have a tendency in rapid speech to
pronounce the syllable-initial as well as the syllable-final
/s/ as a velar or glottal fricative (like the j of Spanish or
the h of English). In the following joke told by a man who
grew up near Anton Chico, New Mexico, all the j’s (except
the last one, where juerte represents a colloquial pronun-
ciation of fuerte) correspond to s in standard Spanish. The
English word hall is pronounced approximately like jol
and understood by the elderly man as sol ‘sun.’
(8-26) Llegó de Antón Chico un señor ya mayorcito
a la oficina de su doctor en Albuquerque y le
preguntó a la recepcionista, que era bilingüe,
“Ejte, jeñorita, nejejito ver al dotor.” “Sí, cómo
no, no más que ahorita el doctor está ocupado.
¿Por qué no lo espera ahí en el hall?” Se quedó
pensando el señor, y luego dijo, “Ejte, jabe,
148
Age 41–64 Age 65–96
58.1 45.1
51.9 38.5
53.3 14.3
36.4 6.3
Age 41–64 Age 65–96
62.9 40.9
56.1 33.3
50.0 28.6
36.0 7.1
jeñorita, mejor lo ejpero en la jombra porque
el jol ejta muy juerte.” ‘An elderly man from
Anton Chico arrived at his doctor’s office in
Albuquerque and spoke to the receptionist,
who was bilingual, “Uh, Miss, I need to see the
doctor.” “Yes, of course, it’s just that the doctor
is busy right now. Why don’t you wait there in
the hall?” The man stood there thinking, and
then he said, “Uh, ya know, Miss, maybe I’d
better wait in the shade ’cause that sun’s pretty
hot.”’ (interview 118)
There is a huge body of research publications that
describe the aspiration of syllable-final /s/ around the
Spanish-speaking world. But there has been surpris-
ingly little documentation of the aspiration of sylla-
ble-initial /s/, which is a striking characteristic of New
Mexican Spanish. The variable aspiration of syllable-
initial /s/ in conversational speech occurs throughout the
NMCOSS territory but is particularly notable in certain
areas, particularly along the upper Río Grande between
Albuquerque and Taos. The following excerpts from our
conversational data illustrate syllable-initial aspiration
on a variety of words. Notice that these are words used
with high frequency, which is a major constraint on such
aspiration (E. Brown 2004, 2005; E. Brown and Torres
Cacoullos 2002, 2003). In these examples, every j repre-
sents the aspiration of /s/. Note that not every /s/ is aspi-
rated, which is the nature of variable phenomena.
chapter eight
 (8-27) Le pregunté que ji quería cajarse conmigo.
‘I asked her if she wanted to marry me.’
(interview 196)
(8-28) Estaba jacándoselaj . . . y soloj je salen. ‘He
was pulling them out . . . and they came out by
themselves.’ (interview 241)
(8-29) Aquí no hajían laj casaj ajina.
‘Here they didn’t make houses that way.’
(interview 279)
(8-30) Dijían que ji estaba un tecolote en
la puerta no puede jalir uno. ‘They used to
say that if there was an owl at the door you
couldn’t go out.’ (interview 289)
(8-31) Yo no jé qué clas de trucha jerá. ‘I don’t know
what kind of fish it is.’ (interview 316)
(8-32) Era una tristeja; no jabía qué hajer. ‘It
was so sad; he didn’t know what to do.’
(interview 318)
Although this kind of aspiration of /s/ is not stereo-
typical of Mexican Spanish, it has recently been docu-
mented for parts of northern Mexico: the states of
Chihuahua (E. Brown and Torres Cacoullos 2002, 2003),
Sonora (D. Brown 1993), and Sinaloa (López Berríos and
Mendoza Guerrero 1997). Given its prominence in New
Mexican Spanish, it may well be that syllable-initial /s/
aspiration is far more widespread in colloquial Mexican
Spanish than is generally thought.
Similarly restricted to variable realization is attach-
ing to the ends of words the vowel -e (sometimes realized
as -i; note the humorous title Yo seigo de Taosi of Torres
1992). This paragogic -e occurs on words that other-
wise have a final stressed syllable and end in a consonant
produced with the tip of the tongue against the gum ridge
just behind the upper teeth (that is, alveolar consonants,
specifically /r, l, n, s/). For example, it is commonplace to
hear such variable pronunciations as trabajare and traba-
jar ‘to work,’ alcojole and alcojol ‘alcohol,’ and ratone and
ratón ‘mouse.’ Following is a sampling of the phenome-
non as it occurs in the NMCOSS conversational data:
(8-33) Yo era muy tomadore. ‘I was quite a
drinker.’ (interview 198)
(8-34) ¿Qué sone? ‘What are they?’
(interview 200)
(8-35) Todos nacieron en Taosi. ‘They were
all born in Taos.’ (interview 236)
(8-36) Nos enseñaron a ler en el papeli.
‘They taught us to read in the newspaper.’
(interview 255)
El Nuevo México
There are constraints on the occurrence of the para-
gogic -e. For instance, as the preceding examples indicate,
the add-on vowel seems to occur only at a point where
the speaker pauses (or as linguists would say, in breath
group final position). The only careful exploration of this
phenomenon is the paper by Hernández Chávez and Pérez
(1991) that unfortunately has never been published.
To illustrate the occurrence of paragogic -e in New
Mexican Spanish, let us look at the responses for 1 item
elicited in our survey, a term for ‘Doctor.’ The responses
vary in three ways. First, the lexical item is usually doctor
(317 cases) but sometimes médico (19 cases). Second, in
the case of doctor, the c may be pronounced (standard
Spanish) or absent (colloquial Spanish), thus doctor versus
dotor. As we would expect in the NMCOSS results, the
colloquial variant is more common (214 responses, 63%)
while the standard variant (103 responses) is associated
with education.
The third source of variability, the one that inter-
ests us here, is the potential for a paragogic -e on doctor
and dotor. Both have final stress and end in the alveo-
lar consonant r. Furthermore, the picture identification
procedure often, though far from invariably, results in the
pronunciation of the word in isolation or otherwise at the
end of a breath group (e.g., Es un dotor ‘He’s a doctor’).
The conditions are favorable enough that we actually
received 43 responses with the paragogic -e (13% of the
total responses). And naturally enough, the colloquial
paragogic -e occurred more frequently with the collo-
quial pronunciation: 39 dotore and 4 doctore. We include
on map 8-14 only the responses of doctor/dotor with and
without paragogic -e and exclude all other responses
(e.g., the 19 cases of médico). We see that the paragogic -e
occurs exclusively in the Traditional Spanish area. Unlike
initial /s/ aspiration, the paragogic -e is characteristic of
Traditional Spanish and absent from Border Spanish.
Now, the reader conversant with Latin might note
a relationship of the paragogic -e with the phonologi-
cal structure of that language, for example, Latin amare
‘to love’ becomes Spanish amar, Latin scribere ‘to write’
becomes Spanish escribir. Could this phenomenon be
not an independent development but an archaic reten-
tion from many, many centuries ago? We have found this
-e documented in only one other place, an indigenous
community on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica (Quesada
Pacheco 2000, 52–53), and that author poses the same
suggestion, noting the possibility of relic forms in such
similarly remote regions.
Another feature that appears to be more broadly
distributed in New Mexican Spanish is the vocalization
149
 8-14. ‘Doctor’

150 chapter eight

of /r/ before alveolar consonants (yep, those consonants
again!) in words such as carne ‘Meat,’ cárcel ‘Jail,’ and perla
‘Pearl.’ The resultant sound is a retroflex semivowel much
like the /r/ of English where the tip of the tongue is curved
up and back. However, if you happen to hear this sound
in the Spanish of our region, you should not jump to the
conclusion, as some scholars have done, that this pronun-
ciation arises from the influence of English. It does not. It
is a perfectly natural product of the Spanish phonological
system. Related modifications of syllable-final /r/ are wide-
spread in Spanish dialects. Besides, fluent speakers of New
Mexican Spanish who pronounce cáRcel (using R to repre-
sent the retroflex sound) would never say peRo for perro
‘dog’ and pero ‘but’ as English speakers might do.
Thus, New Mexican Spanish changes over time,
as all languages do. The Latin language, spread by the
Romans across southern Europe, diverged over a thou-
sand years into diverse dialects and eventually to the
distinct Romance languages. In like fashion, the Spanish
El Nuevo México
language, spread across the New World, diverged into
diverse dialects. Wherever there is a weakening of
communication between groups of speakers of the same
language, the speech of those groups will tend to diverge
over time. Thus, the diverse varieties of New World
Spanish have arisen.
The group of Spanish speakers of the New Mexico
region—in their remote outpost on the northern frontier
of New Spain, later on the fringe of the young nation of
Mexico, and then embedded in a linguistically distinct
country—certainly experienced a weakening of commu-
nication links with other Spanish speakers, and as a
consequence the dialect we call Traditional New Mexican
Spanish developed. Natural linguistic processes of inter-
nal change contributed to this development. But change
in this new dialect was fostered, not solely by a weakening
of contact with other Spanishes, but also by a strengthen-
ing of contact with speakers of other languages. The next
two chapters examine these external sources of change.
151
 Chap ter 9
Uneasy Alliances
The Contribution
of Local Languages
• New Mexican Spanish carries evidence of prior
contacts with other languages: the Arabic language
of the Moors in Spain, the native languages of the
Caribbean, the language of the Aztecs, and many other
languages. New linguistic contacts took place as soon as
the first permanent Spanish-speaking colonists settled
in New Mexico in 1598, and that potential for externally
motivated change has endured for over four centuries.
However, prior to its contact with English, which began
in earnest only in the last half of the nineteenth century,
the nascent New Mexican Spanish was exposed to just
two external influences and those influences turned out
to be minor. Those two linguistic contacts were the local
Native American languages and the French language.
Native American Influence
The Native Americans that the Spanish speakers encoun-
tered in the New Mexico colony were of two princi-
pal kinds, the sedentary Pueblos and several largely
nomadic tribes. The “Pueblo” Indians were labeled thus
by Spanish speakers because they lived in towns. The
so-called Pueblo languages actually represent three
distinct linguistic groups: Zuni, Keresan, and Tanoan
(pronounced Ta-NO-an, not TA-no-an like the subdi-
vision in Albuquerque). The Zuni language, spoken in
a pueblo near the Arizona border, is a linguistic isolate.
Its relationship to any other language is still unclear.
The Keresan language family is spread out west of the
Río Grande south of Santa Fe and is represented today
by the pueblos of Acoma, Cochití, Laguna, San Felipe,
Santa Ana, Santo Domingo, and Zia. The Tanoan
family is spoken generally east and north of the Keresan
languages and is composed of three linguistic subgroups:
Towa (spoken in the pueblo of Jemez), Tiwa (pueblos
of Isleta, Picuris, Sandia, and Taos), and Tewa (pueblos
of Nambé, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, Ohkay Owingeh
[previously called San Juan], Santa Clara, and Tesuque).
Closely related linguistically to the Tanoan family also
are the more nomadic Kiowa, a Plains Indian group
now located primarily in southwestern Oklahoma. This
Kiowa-Tanoan family is more distantly related to the
Uto-Aztecan languages, of which Nahuatl (or Aztec)
is the most southern member (and the most northern
members, as the family name suggests, are the Paiutes or
Utes, whence the name Utah).
153
 Most of the nomadic tribes in the New Mexico–
southern Colorado region during the colonial period
were speakers of two linguistic families: Athapascan
and Uto-Aztecan. The Athapascan family is repre-
sented in this area by Navajo and several Apache vari-
eties (Jicarilla and Mescalero now in New Mexico, and
others in Arizona). Apache and Navajo are closely related
languages whose next closest relatives were spread out in
the northwestern United States and western Canada, from
northern California to Alaska. The prominent members
of the Uto-Aztecan language family in this area are the
Utes and the Comanches.
For centuries, Hispanic and Pueblo interactions with
the nomadic groups were usually quite hostile, involving
raids on each other’s establishments and taking of slaves.
Given a long history of this kind of contact, it is unsur-
prising that there has been almost no linguistic influ-
ence on Traditional Spanish from the Apache and Navajo
languages. Cobos (2003), for example, identifies only two
words as possibly from Navajo (chihuil ‘small valley’ and
josquere in the phrase andar en el josquere ‘to be sowing
one’s wild oats’) and one from Apache (gileño, referring to
the Gila Apache), terms that apparently are only margin-
ally known or used today. However, the reverse direc-
tion of lexical influence was more substantial. In Navajo,
for example, the terms for ‘money’ (béeso) and ‘Anglo’
(bilagáana) were borrowed from Spanish peso and amer-
icano, to mention only two everyday words (see Young
and Morgan 1987, 7).
Interaction with the Pueblos, on the other hand, was
very different. These Native Americans were stable farm-
ers along the waterways of northern New Mexico. They
lived in well-constructed cities of multistoried dwellings.
And they appear to have been amiable if unwilling hosts
to the arriving Hispanics. In fact, Oñate and his colo-
nists established their first settlement next to San Juan
Pueblo, and the priests immediately set to work convert-
ing to Catholicism the people of all these Pueblos, with
considerable success, as partly indicated by the current
names of several Pueblos (e.g., San Felipe, Santa Clara).
The contact of the Pueblo peoples with the Hispanic
community, then, was seemingly intimate on some levels
and therefore amenable to cross-cultural and cross-
linguistic fertilization. For example, the Pueblos adopted
Catholicism across the board, though without giving up
traditional religious beliefs and practices.
Furthermore, the Hispanics were a numerical minor-
ity through much of the colonial period. The Native
American population seems to have exceeded the tiny
Hispanic population by tens of thousands throughout the
154
seventeenth century (see Gutiérrez 1991, 92, table 2.1), and
the Hispanics remained a minority until at least 1760 (see
Gutiérrez 1991, 167, table 4.2; J. A. Trujillo 1997, 127–28).
But relative population numbers have little to do with
how one language influences another, as we will see again
when the tables are turned with the arrival of the Anglo.
And it most certainly is the case that Traditional
Spanish has seen exceedingly little linguistic influence
from the local Pueblo languages after four centuries of
contact. How could there be so little influence after so
many years of multifaceted interaction between the
Hispanics and the Pueblo Indians? For one thing, after
a hundred years of interaction with other indigenous
languages in the New World, particularly Taino and
Nahuatl, as discussed in preceding chapters, much of the
lexical need to identify New World entities such as flora
and fauna had already been satisfied prior to the coloniza-
tion of New Mexico.
But more important, the lack of influence also reflects
three local social factors. First, although the local Native
Americans outnumbered the Hispanics for nearly two
hundred years, the Pueblo population declined rather
rapidly and spoke a variety of different languages.
Second, the Hispanics considered their culture and
their language supreme, and they were heavy-handed in
dealing with the Native Americans, particularly with
regard to religion and tribute (J. A. Trujillo 1997, 329–30):
(9-1) Despite the highly developed civic and
religious culture of the indigenous
population, the Spanish clung to the ideals
embodied in the casta [racial classification]
and encomienda [forced labor and tribute]
systems, rejecting the cultural influence of
their neighbors and engaging in a concerted
effort to strip them of every vestige of their
supposedly heathen culture.
As Trujillo observes, similar heavy-handedness later
characterized the behavior of the English speakers in
dealing with the Hispanics of the region, a point empha-
sized also by Gutiérrez in his epilogue (1991, 337–40).
The third and probably most significant social factor
is that the Pueblo Indians themselves were able to erect
rigid barriers around their culture, tying native religious
practice and language together as private possessions to
be safeguarded from outsiders. By doing so, they have
managed to protect and preserve their cultural integrity
for four hundred years. (And another consequence is that
very little documentation of these languages is available
chapter nine
in the public domain, making still more difficult the
task of confirming Spanish-Pueblo cross-linguistic in­-
fluences, as will be apparent in the following discussion
of loanwords.)
The result of these special social conditions was a
stable societal bilingualism involving the two groups.
The Hispanics spoke Spanish, the Río Grande Pueblo
Indians spoke their native languages, and mediat-
ing between the two were lots of bilinguals—but those
bilinguals tended to be the Native Americans, not the
Hispanics. Interactions between the two ethnic groups,
therefore, tended to be conducted in Spanish since few
Hispanics spoke a Pueblo language.
One consequence of this unidirectional type of bilin-
gualism is that the Pueblos tended to borrow a substantial
number of words from Spanish, mostly having to do with
religion, government, material culture, plants, animals,
time words, and numbers. For example, Spencer (1947)
documents 100 or so fully integrated Spanish borrowings
in the Keresan languages in general, and W. R. Miller
(1959–60) identifies some 140 such borrowings in the
Acoma language.
In contrast, very few loanwords were adopted into
New Mexican Spanish (see Cobos 2003, xii–xiii). People
generally don’t borrow words from languages they
don’t speak. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
Espinosa reported that the local Native American element
amounted to “perhaps not more than a score of words”
(1911, 13). More recently, Cobos’s dictionary (2003) specifi-
cally identifies a total of only 16 Pueblo loanwords and
several are only tentative identifications. Aside from the
names for specific peoples and places (e.g., Ácoma, Jémez,
Tegua, Taos, Zuni) and cultural artifacts (e.g., cachina
‘ceremonial doll,’ quiva ‘kiva, underground ceremonial
chamber’), only a handful of words have been attributed
to the Pueblo languages, typically having to do with foods
(chaquegüe ‘a blue-corn gruel,’ tosayes ‘sun-dried pump-
kin strips’) and plants and herbs (coyaye ‘rattlesnake
weed’ and perhaps oshá ‘wild celery’).
The specific elicitation component of the NMCOSS
included only 3 cases in which a local Native American
loanword played a significant role, and 2 of these involve
the same word, cunques. Already in 1581, the scribe for
the Chamuscado expedition noted that an Indian group
used the word cunque for ‘corn’ (Hammond and Rey 1966,
86). Cobos (2003) claims that this word has its origin in
the Zuni cunques, meaning ‘bits of ground corn or corn-
meal used for ceremonial purposes.’ But Jerry Craddock
(1996, 357–58; personal communication) finds the likely
source to be Río Grande Tewa, as attested in Robbins,
Uneasy Alliances
Harrington, and Freire-Marreco (1916, 16), where the
words (leaving aside several orthographic details that are
unimportant here) kun ‘corn plant’ and ke ‘grain’ form
the compound kunke ‘grain of corn.’
We were pleasantly surprised to find that Santamaría
(1959) reports that cunque occurs in northern Mexico with
the meaning of cracked or coarsely ground corn used to feed
baby chicks. He cites a quote from Brondo Whitt’s descrip-
tion of her experiences in northern Mexico (1935, 223):
(9-1) Y yo no sé de dónde ha venido el llamar cunque
al maicito quebrado que dan de alimento a los
pollitos. ‘I don’t know where that use of cunque
for the cracked corn they feed to chickens
comes from.’
He in turn would be surprised to learn that it may well be
an import from the United States!
But ‘chicken feed’ is not the usual meaning of
cunques in New Mexican Spanish today. L. Trujillo (1983)
gives only the meaning ‘coffee grounds.’ Cobos (2003)
gives that meaning but also includes ‘dregs’ more gener-
ally and ‘crumbs’ in his explanation of the word. Our
survey questionnaire included two of these meanings:
‘Coffee grounds’ and ‘Crumbs.’
The more widespread use of cunques in the NMCOSS
is for reference to ‘Coffee grounds,’ the bits of coffee that
settle to the bottom of a cup or pot. Map 9-1 demonstrates
that cunques is far and away the preferred term for ‘Coffee
grounds’ in every part of our territory. Including 3 cases
of conques, 11 of cunquis, and 12 of cunque, this label was
the choice of 222 of the 271 respondents, an impressive
82%. Only 23 persons (8%) offered the usual Spanish term
asientos, and another 17 reported knowing no Spanish
word for that concept.
In contrast, asientos is the heavily preferred term
for ‘Coffee grounds’ in Mexico today (ALM mapa 840).
However, the ALM encountered 6 responses related to
cunques (all of which seem to be secondary responses);
3 of these responses are cunquis and there is 1 response
each of conquis, conque, and junque. All occurred in
three northern localities in Chihuahua, the state border-
ing New Mexico. Note, however, that our consultant who
was born in Chihuahua prefers asientos. What are we to
make of this showing of cunques for ‘Coffee grounds’ (not
to mention for ‘chicken feed’) in Mexico? It looks very
much like a Pueblo loanword has spread not only across
the NMCOSS territory but across the border as well. New
Mexican Spanish seems to have contributed something to
Mexican Spanish other than Anglicisms.
155
 9-1. ‘Coffee grounds’

156 chapter nine

 The other common meaning of cunques in New
Mexican Spanish is ‘Crumbs,’ conceptually close enough
to coffee grounds (and indeed cracked corn) to be a
reasonable semantic extension. The NMCOSS consultants
were asked to identify the crumbs fallen from the edges
of chocolate chip cookies. As map 9-2 demonstrates, the
most widely used label is the standard term migajas with
51% of the consultant responses (163 of 319 respondents).
Included with migajas for the display on this map are
20 cases of the close but slightly off midajas. Another 16
persons aimed for this label with a variety of other less
accurate shots such as magajas, mijagas, and miragas, but
these are not represented on the map.
Although a migajas target is the clear majority pref-
erence in New Mexican Spanish, 1 in 5 consultants offered
cunques. This is the preference—if we include 6 variant
pronunciations as conques, conquis, and cunquis—of
a total of 64 persons, a sizable 20% of the sample. The
distribution of the cunques forms in map 9-2 is strik-
ingly consistent with Cobos’s proposed Zuni origin of the
term. Zuni Pueblo is located on the western edge of New
Mexico in McKinley County. It is approximately thirty
miles south of the city of Gallup, where the 2 northern-
most western instances of cunques occur, as shown on
map 9-2. The use of cunques for ‘Crumbs’ forms a coher-
ent pattern to the south and east of the traditional Zuni
homeland. On the other hand, if the word cunques is a
borrowing from Tewa (San Juan), we find striking the
general absence of this meaning in the area of the Tewa
Pueblos, all located along the upper Río Grande above
Santa Fe. In this connection, it is relevant to note that
Lope Blanch’s Mora subjects in northeastern New Mexico
mirror our findings; they reported only migajas forms for
‘Crumbs’ and only cunques forms for ‘Coffee grounds’
(1990a, 90). It is also notable on map 9-2 that the use of
cunques for ‘Crumbs’ extends pretty far south in New
Mexico. However, not a single occurrence of a cunques
form is reported for ‘Crumbs’ in the Atlas lingüístico de
México (mapa 839).
Another apparent borrowing from a Pueblo language
is the term guayabes for ‘Pancakes.’ Only 14 persons (just
4% of the 337 NMCOSS respondents) preferred this label.
But despite its low frequency of occurrence, map 9-3
reveals that it generally occurs in an area very reminis-
cent of the distribution of cunques for ‘Crumbs.’
Cobos (2003) asserts that guayabe derives from
Tewa buwayabe ‘paper bread’ and specifically notes that
Zuni has a different word, hewe, for this kind of bread.
He describes the meaning of guayabe in New Mexican
Spanish as ‘a kind of wafer-like bread made with blue
Uneasy Alliances
cornmeal.’ Curtin (1947, 119) spells it guallabe and also
assigns it the wafer-bread meaning. But if this word is
a borrowing from Tewa, it is once again curious that
we found no cases in the upper Río Grande area where
a Tewa language is spoken today. Perhaps the term is
more widely used in New Mexican Spanish with the
wafer-bread meaning? We don’t know. The picture that
elicited these responses is a very traditional American
stack of pancakes topped with a pat of butter and a ladle
of syrup.
Map 9-3 indicates that the term for ‘Pancakes’ used
by the great majority of speakers of New Mexican Spanish
is a loanword from English, an Anglicism (the focus of the
next chapter). In fact, fully 93% of the responses represent
some form of the Anglicism. The only other responses
besides guayabes are 2 cases of breles (itself apparently an
adaptation of the English ‘bread’), 2 of buñuelos, and 1 of
galletas—all perhaps motivated by the desire to offer some
Spanish word and avoid using an Anglicism.
Pancakes represent a cultural adoption from the
Anglo newcomers to the NMCOSS region. It seems that
only a small number extended the meaning of an exist-
ing word, guayabes, to identify this food. Most simply
adopted the English label along with the new menu item.
We show on map 9-3 that the English borrowing to label
‘Pancakes’ surfaces in two principal ways: as a sponta-
neous borrowing with pronunciation as in English (e.g.,
pancakes, hotcakes) and as a form fully integrated into the
phonology of Spanish (e.g., panqueques). Nearly a quarter
(24%) of the 337 responses are spontaneous borrowings,
55 cases of pancakes and 25 cases of hotcakes. Most of the
responses, however, were the fully integrated panqueques,
offered by 65% of the respondents (218 persons). The other
English-based terms offered were isolated cases such as
jatquequis, pancaques, and panques.
Now, the map shows that the 2 ways of adopting the
English term correspond to pretty much complemen-
tary geographical distributions. The integrated loanword
panqueques is characteristic of the Traditional Spanish
area while the spontaneous borrowing (either pancakes
or hotcakes) is characteristic of the Border Spanish areas.
Since phonological integration of a foreign word by a
bilingual population requires time, typically at least a
generation or two, we can plausibly assume that the intro-
duction of this food took place first in the Traditional
Spanish area and that the use of the nonintegrated
Anglicism is a much more recent incorporation into the
speech of those with closer ties to Mexico.
In this connection, it is of interest to note that the
integrated borrowing panqueque occurs more broadly
157
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158 chapter nine

 9-3. ‘Pancakes’

Uneasy Alliances 159

in the Spanish-speaking world. The CREA, for instance,
contains 55 cases of this term in plural form and 29 cases
in singular form. But 87% of these cases come from
South America and not 1 represents Mexico. The failure
to integrate the label for this cultural import appears to
be another display of the unity of Mexican Spanish and
Border Spanish.
French Influence
Contact with the French language arose already at the
end of the seventeenth century as a result of “the intense
rivalry between Spain and France for possession of
the vast wilderness in the interior of North America”
(Simmons 1977, 78). But it was only beginning in the late
eighteenth century that the residents of New Mexico came
into contact—irregular and illegal—with French speak-
ers, primarily and almost exclusively through interactions
with the French fur trappers and traders who roamed
western North America. Those interactions increased
when Mexico gained independence in 1821 and eased
restrictions on trade in the New Mexico territory. Weber
(1971) documents the considerable extent of that contact,
particularly in chapter 6 (“Enter the French, 1824–1825”),
which among other things names seven Frenchmen who
settled in Taos already in 1824 (97), and in chapter 11
(“New Citizens, 1829–1831”), in which the documentation
of those who applied for Mexican citizenship included
such French names as Antoine Robidoux, Jean Jeantet,
Abraham Ledoux, Pedro Laliberté, Antoine Leroux, José
Bissonette, Jean Baptiste Trudeau, Pierre Lesperance,
François Turcotte, and Jean Vaillant (181, 185–88).
This contact produced little linguistic cross-fertiliza-
tion. A few place names and family names (Ledoux, Tixier,
Leger) that are strongly embedded in the Traditional
Spanish cultural milieu are probably attributable to this
French influence. Two very common surnames in the
NMCOSS region today—Archibeque and Gurulé—derive
from two survivors of an early (1684) French intrusion
into Texas, Jean l’Archeveque and Jacques Grolé, who
were captured, taken to Mexico City, and later allowed to
immigrate to New Mexico.
The French intrusion introduced a number of family
names ending in a stressed vowel, for example, Gurulé
and Tixier (pronounced [tišé]). It is interesting to note
that in New Mexican Spanish such words are apt to form
their plurals with the nonstandard suffix -ses (versus
standard -s), the general colloquial-speech rule for native
words having final stressed vowels. Thus, just as the
plural forms of papá (‘Fathers’) and café (‘Coffees’) are
160
typically (or more accurately, stereotypically) papases
and cafeses, so one would say [los tišeses] ‘the Tixiers’ to
refer to several members of the Tixier family. In this fash-
ion, a ninety-four-year-old woman from Bueyeros, New
Mexico, made reference to esos Guruleses que viven ahi en
Peñoncito ‘those Gurulés who live over there in Peñoncito’
(interview 274).
However, in the everyday vocabulary of modern New
Mexican Spanish there appear to be very few “Gallicisms”
(as borrowings from French are often called). One quite
significant example is puela for ‘Skillet,’ ‘frying pan,’
which presumably derives from French poêle. We suspect
that this form was introduced as some kind of cultural
innovation by French fur traders carrying minimal cook-
ing materials. This label is the dominant form for ‘Skillet’
in New Mexican Spanish, being the first choice of 159 of
the 332 respondents (48%). Map 9-4 demonstrates that
puela dominates across the Traditional Spanish region.
The robustness with which this lexical item is entrenched
in the dialect is indicated by the existence of derived
forms such as puelada, a skillet-full of something, and
puelar, an assortment of pots and pans, both listed in
Cobos (2003).
To our knowledge, the word puela is found in only
one other variety of Spanish. Significantly, that other
dialect is the Brule Spanish of Louisiana, a variety of
Isleño Spanish that is spoken in the heart of the Cajun
French territory (see Holloway 1997, 94). The fact that
neither Armistead (1992) nor Lipski (1990) nor MacCurdy
(1975) report this form in the Isleño dialect outside the
French area makes its status as a French loan convinc-
ing. Galván and Teschner (1975) include puela ‘frying pan’
in El diccionario del español de Tejas, but there is reason
to doubt its currency in Texas. It is not reported in the
Cerda, Cabaza, and Farias dictionary (1953), for exam-
ple. We suspect that the Galván and Teschner entry was
gleaned from a single one of their sources, Kercheville
(1967), which consists largely of previously published
vocabulary collected in New Mexico (Kercheville 1934).
The second most common term for ‘Skillet’ is the
standard variant sartén, which gleaned 103 first choices,
or 31%. Map 9-4 shows that this label is particularly char-
acteristic of the Border Spanish regions. The remaining
2 forms displayed on map 9-4, horno and comal, occur
exclusively in Traditional Spanish territory. Both terms
were used specifically to refer to the heavy cast-iron type
of skillet. As stated in chapter 7, comal is an early loan-
word from Nahuatl. It originally referred to an earthen
griddle (which is still the meaning in Mexican Spanish).
It is documented for New Mexico by L. Trujillo only
chapter nine
 9-4. ‘Skillet’

Uneasy Alliances 161

with the meaning of ‘a flat earthenware pan for cooking
corn, etc.’ (1983, 70) and by Cobos only with the mean-
ing ‘copper or iron griddle’ (2003, 53). But the NMCOSS
results establish that its meaning has been broadened
to include ‘Skillet’ for some speakers of New Mexican
Spanish. It is clearly a relic form, however. Only 15 of our
consultants offered this form as their first choice. All were
elderly (only 2 under seventy years of age) and most repre-
sented rural areas.
Horno, on the other hand, is the universal Spanish
word for ‘oven,’ and Cobos (2003) includes it only with this
meaning though with specific reference to the traditional
outdoor domed oven so typical of the region. However, the
earlier version of Cobos (1983) as well as L. Trujillo (1983)
acknowledge that it also refers to a skillet made of iron.
Perhaps this usage arises from the use of these large, heavy
pans for slow cooking, corresponding to what is called in
English a ‘Dutch oven.’ Although many more persons (46,
14% of the sample) offered this variant for ‘Skillet,’ they
too tended to be older (18 were over seventy years of age).
We will see in chapter 12 that the preference for comal and
horno declines across the generations.
The 3 forms for ‘Skillet’ that are most typical of
Traditional Spanish seem to occur in practically no other
variety of Spanish. Puela, as previously noted, is found
in Louisiana Spanish, but it is not included in the DRAE
or the CREA, and the 1 early example of this form in the
CORDE has nothing to do with this lexical item. It is not
listed in Santamaría’s Diccionario de mejicanismos (1959)
either. Comal and horno do not appear with the meaning
‘Skillet’ in either the DRAE or Santamaría.
The stimulus that elicited the ‘Skillet’ responses was a
picture of a cast-iron skillet. However, in 59 cases the inter-
viewer specifically asked what term would be used for a
thin, light-weight skillet. For this reference, 78% preferred
puela. Though the number of respondents is much smaller,
that’s an increase of 30 percentage points over the response
to the cast-iron skillet. This result may support the notion
that puela was originally introduced as a smaller, lighter
cooking utensil used by wandering French trappers.
Conversational examples from 2 consultants makes explicit
that size matters, agreeing that puela is the smaller utensil
while using different labels for the larger:
(9-2) No, ese no es puela; ese es horno, porque es de
fierro. ‘No, that one isn’t a puela; it’s an horno,
because it’s made of iron.’ (interview 219)
(9-3) Mi mama tenía . . . un sartén grande de hierro
y los más chiquitos que están hechos de stainless
steel y alumiño, esos eran las puelas. ‘My mother
162
had a large cast-iron sartén and the smaller ones
that are made of stainless steel and aluminum,
those are puelas.’ (interview 108)
Nevertheless, even for the thin skillet, 2 persons preferred
comal and 1 preferred hornito. Regardless of historical
origin, it is clear that today puela and sartén, for most
of our consultants, refer to any kind of skillet, whether
heavy cast-iron or the lighter and thinner versions of
modern life.
Another French loanword in New Mexican Spanish
is chamuz for ‘Slipper’ (‘bedroom slipper,’ ‘house shoe’).
Rubén Cobos states without any qualms that this term is
a borrowing from French chamois and “was introduced
to New Mexico at the end of the seventeenth century by
French trappers in northern New Mexico” (2003, 68).
Chamuz is but 1 of numerous terms we encountered for
‘Slipper,’ and its geographical distribution is revealing (see
map 9-5). We received only 41 preferences for chamuz,
but like the 2 cases reported by Pedrero (2002, 72), they
cover a region of the northern mountains that fur trap-
pers would have found most attractive. It is likely that the
term originally applied to the warm, fur-lined footwear
of the trappers, though the NMCOSS stimulus pictured
a small, lightweight bedroom slipper. The assumption of
the French source for chamuz is supported by the fact that
in New Mexican Spanish chamuza, apparently another
French fur trader loanword, is the word for the soft
leather ‘chamois’ (also spelled ‘shammy’ in English). The
standard Spanish word for ‘chamois’ is gamuza, which
derives directly from the same Latin source that led to
French chamois.
But the most common New Mexican Spanish word for
‘Slipper’ is chopo, as clearly confirmed in Pedrero’s analysis.
This was the first choice of 134 NMCOSS consultants (41%),
and they too are strongly representative of the Traditional
Spanish turf. The origin of this word is a mystery. Chopo in
other varieties of Spanish refers variously to a kind of tree
(typically a poplar), a mollusk, a gun, and a short person.
Its use for ‘Slipper’ seems generally unknown to Mexicans
we have questioned, and we have no other documentation
of chopo referring to any kind of footwear. Curiously, it
is listed with the ‘Slipper’ meaning in the 1983 edition of
Cobos’s dictionary but fails to occur in the 2003 edition.
In 1983 he gave the ‘poplar’ form as the source for the New
Mexican Spanish use, perhaps assuming a connection
with choclo in the meaning of protective, elevated shoe
bottoms made of wood. We did in fact receive 1 preference
of choclo for ‘Slipper’ and Pedrero (2002) reports 2, only
in the NMCOSS area. This leads her to suggest that chopo
chapter nine
 9-5. ‘Slipper’

Uneasy Alliances 163

might be derived from choclo—which she unwisely goes
on to relate to Quechua choclo ‘ear of corn’! Speculation
based solely on similarity in form is not useful. Wherever
chopo came from, there can be little doubt that this
well-entrenched word is another little piece that makes
Traditional Spanish so unique.
A third term shown on map 9-5 is yet another
French loanword, pantufla (from French pantoufle). It
does not seem to be attributable to the French fur trad-
ers, however. Only 15 persons preferred this label and the
map demonstrates that they are associated with Border
Spanish. Santamaría (1959) lists the term, and our inqui-
ries indicate that this label is commonly used in Mexico.
Moreover, the VARILEX atlas indicates that the form
occurs all across Latin America and Spain. The DRAE,
however, includes this word only as an alternative form
of the masculine gender pantuflo.
The final label depicted on map 9-5, the preference
of 22 persons (7%), is chancla, including 6 cases of the
diminutive chanclita. The distribution of this form is
somewhat incoherent, but there is some association with
Border Spanish. Pedrero (2002) asserts that chancla is
the term generally used for ‘Slipper’ in the other three
Southwest states (though Alvar 2000, 209, lists chancleta
for Louisiana). It is a widely used Spanish word for varied
kinds of foot covering. In New Mexican Spanish, for
example, some speakers use it for high-heeled shoes and
others say it’s used strictly for old shoes.
A final way of naming ‘Slipper’ occurs with some
frequency but is not included on map 9-5 because its
geographical distribution shows no patterning. This form
consists of using the basic word for ‘Shoe,’ zapato, in a
variety of ways (e.g., zapato, zapatito, zapatillo, zapato de
la mañana, zapato de casa). A total of 39 persons (12%)
responded with a zapato form. There were also 8 prefer-
ences for chinela, another general shoe term like chancla;
164
4 preferences for guarache, the Mexican leather sandal;
3 of tegua ‘moccasin’; and 3 of calcetín ‘sock.’ These
responses, together with the fact that 35 consultants
resorted to English (e.g., slipper, bootie) and another 12
gave no response at all, indicate that a special foot cover-
ing for indoor use is not a generalized key component of
culture in the NMCOSS region.
Finally, let us mention one other possibility of a French
trapper loanword. Looking back to our lengthy discus-
sion in chapter 7 of the ‘Hut, shack’ variable (map 7-4), we
might wish to reconsider the origin of chante. There we
drew the conclusion that this term was a borrowing not
from Nahuatl, but from English shanty, and we offered
evidence that it was an early borrowing. Now we wish to
suggest that it might have been incorporated even earlier
than the arrival of the English speakers. Perhaps New
Mexican Spanish borrowed this form directly from the
French spoken by the fur trappers and traders. After all,
the English word shanty is said to derive not from conti-
nental French, but from Canadian French chantier ‘hut.’
Canadian French was the variety spoken by the fur traders.
The ‘Hut, shack’ meaning would be perfectly appropriate
to the kind of shelter the meandering trappers were accus-
tomed to spending their nights in. A direct French origin
of chante, therefore, seems like a very reasonable proposal,
though we have no strong evidence to bolster this hypoth-
esis over the English intermediary hypothesis.
The paucity of linguistic influence from French and
local Native American languages reflects particular social
situations where the other language was viewed as only
marginally relevant to Hispanic life. The fact that the
quite limited association with the fur traders had about as
much linguistic influence as four hundred years of asso-
ciation with the Pueblos is revealing of how guarded the
Hispanic-Indian interaction was. The situation was very
different when speakers of English arrived on the scene.
chapter nine
 Chap ter 10
Anglicisms
The Domineering Force
of the Yankee Tide
• Ramón Gutiérrez observes (1991, 340) that “the
arrival of the Anglos in New Mexico initiated an
intense cycle of cultural conflict over the very same issues
that had pitted the Spanish against the Pueblo Indians—
religion, labor, land, and water.” He might also have
mentioned language.
The most significant political event in the Spanish
linguistic history of the NMCOSS region occurred in the
middle of the nineteenth century. The westward expan-
sion of the United States led to a war with Mexico that
culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo in 1848. The terms of this accord transferred to
the United States a great swath of northern Mexico, over
half of Mexico’s national territory in fact. As a conse-
quence, the previous trickle of Anglo Americans into the
region increased dramatically, and soon Anglos came to
dominate numerically and economically over Hispanics
and Native Americans across the Southwest. In New
Mexico, however, the Anglo population did not come to
constitute a numerical majority until the middle of the
twentieth century, even though the Anglo minority and
the English language had wielded tremendous clout there
for a hundred years previously.
The 150 years or so of contact with the English
language has produced the most substantial external
impact of all on the Spanish of New Mexico and south-
ern Colorado. The impact has occurred in two ways. On
the one hand, the appearance of New Mexican Spanish
has undergone conspicuous change, taking on a distinctly
English complexion in vocabulary. Beyond superficial
appearances, on the other hand, the very survival of the
language in the United States has become threatened by
English. Traditional Spanish is on the endangered list.
Complex social changes have led much of the Hispanic
population across the Southwest to relinquish use of
Spanish in favor of English. The Hispanic-Anglo contact
has not produced the kind of stable bilingual society
that occurred with the Pueblo-Hispanic contact. Rather,
a shift to English as the dominant or only language is
characteristic of the overwhelming majority of native-
born Hispanics in our survey area as well as in the U.S.
Southwest more generally. We will deal with the shift
toward English and the resultant loss of proficiency in
Spanish in chapter 13. Here we consider only the super-
ficial linguistic consequences of the contact on New
Mexican Spanish.
165
 Code-Switching
The influence of English takes many forms. A well-stud-
ied manifestation is what linguists call code-switching,
a linguistic behavior that is common to bilingual situ-
ations around the world. This phenomenon involves
seamlessly inserting stretches of one language into the
stream of another language, as exemplified by the follow-
ing excerpt from the interview with a sixty-two-year-old
woman from Bernalillo, New Mexico (interview 117):
(10-1) Hablaba muncho en mexicano aquí, ¿no? Yo
y nosotros aquí among us. Hablaba muncho
en mexicano y even cuando viene la Joslyn,
mi nieta. . . . Y yo le hablo en mexicano. . . . Le
vuelvo a repitir yo lo que yo le dije y luego se lo
hago translate en inglés. Le digo, “Mi hijita,”
le digo, “this is what I said to you.” Se lo hago
translate en inglés. Le hablo en mexicano, le
digo dos o tres veces. Y luego, luego, “Listen to
it.” Y me escucha. Y luego . . . le hago translate
que le dije en mexicano. Le digo, “Aprende, mi
hija.” Le digo, “Aprende,” le digo, “maybe—
puede que algún día de esos necesiten en un
trabajo alguien que sepa las dos idiomas, en
inglés y mexicano. They’ll need somebody to
translate what this—maybe there’s a Spanish-
speaking person there, and you know both,
you can translate for these people.” . . . Y me
dice, “I know,” me dice, “but it’s so hard.” Le
digo, “It’s not if you really want to learn it. No
está tan duro asina.” ‘I used to speak Spanish a
lot here, you know. Me and us here among us.
I’d speak Spanish a lot and even when Joslyn,
my granddaughter comes over. . . . And I talk
to her in Spanish. . . . I repeat what I told her
and have her translate it into English. I speak to
her in Spanish, say it two or three times. And
then, then, “Listen to it.” And she listens to me.
And then . . . I have her translate what I said in
Spanish. I tell her, “Learn, my child.” I tell her,
“Learn,” I say, “maybe—it might be that one of
these days in some job they’ll need someone
who knows both languages, English and
Spanish. They’ll need somebody to translate
what this—maybe there’s a Spanish-speaking
person there, and if you know both, you can
translate for these people.” . . . And she says to
me, “I know,” she says, “but it’s so hard.” I tell
her, It’s not if you really want to learn it. It’s not
so hard that way.”’
166
Contrary to what some people believe, code-switch-
ing does not demonstrate a linguistic deficit. In fact, the
opposite is true. Many careful studies of such speech in
U.S. Spanish-speaking communities (e.g., Elías-Olivares
1982, Poplack 1982, Toribio and Rubin 1996, Zentella
1997, chapter 5 in particular) and around the world have
shown that proficient code-switchers are in fact those
persons who are quite proficient in both of the languages
involved. The reader can ascertain from example 10-1
that this bilingual woman has a firm command of
both English and Spanish. There is nothing lacking or
un-Spanish in the Spanish segments and nothing lack-
ing or un-English in the English segments.
But having bilingual competence is not itself suffi-
cient for code-switching. A critical prerequisite for a
bilingual to engage in code-switching is that the other
person or persons involved in the interaction also be
bilingual. Furthermore, natural code-switching usually
requires that the other person be not just bilingual, but
natively bilingual of the same background. Indeed,
research has shown that bilinguals who learned one of
the two languages as an adult are generally not compe-
tent code-switchers (see, e.g., Gingràs 1974).
All the persons interviewed in the NMCOSS were
bilingual to some degree in English and Spanish. And all
the NMCOSS interviewers were bilingual natives of the
area with good proficiency in both languages. However,
there were several factors that made the interactions
less than ideal for code-switching. First, the interviewer
and the consultant in most cases were previously unac-
quainted. Second, sitting down for an interview in front
of a microphone necessarily adds a degree of formal-
ity to any conversation and formality is unfavorable for
natural code-switching. Finally, the consultants knew
in advance that the purpose of the interview was to
gain information about their knowledge and use of the
Spanish language, and an “Avoid English!” strategy was
often as evident in their behavior as if it were written in
flashing lights.
Nonetheless, the critical criterion of an interaction
between native bilinguals was met, and consequently,
code-switching turned out to be a fairly common-
place occurrence. As Ana Celia Zentella (1997, 113) says,
“Code switching is, fundamentally, a conversational
activity via which speakers negotiate meaning with
each other, like salsa dancers responding smoothly to
each other’s intricate steps and turns.” Some idea of the
salsa (or ranchera) moves in code-switching across the
NMCOSS sample can be appreciated in the following
short examples:
chapter ten
 (10-2) Que busquen al Señor, porque that’s the only
way que van a entrar al Reino. ‘They should
look to the Lord, because that’s the only way
they’re going to enter the Kingdom.’
(interview 198)
(10-3) Pero yo creo que she picked up enough
information. ‘But I think she picked up
enough information.’ (interview 242)
(10-4) ¡Ponle la TV en el cuarto de Grandma!
‘Put the TV in Grandma’s room for her!’
(interview 248)
(10-5) The reason que la gente mexicana es tan short
es porque su—por su diet que está tan pobre.
‘The reason that Mexican people are so short is
because their—because of their diet that is so
poor.’ (interview 306)
(10-6) Se hacían mix no más con las high society
Indians. ‘They would mix only with the high
society Indian women.’ (interview 319)
(10-7) And I bet you que en un diccionario that
there’s not such a word. ‘And I bet you that
in a dictionary that there’s not such a word.’
(interview 345)
(10-8) Nos lo bebimos casi todo and I ended up
in the hospital por una semana. ‘We drank
almost all of it and I ended up in the hospital
for a week.’ (interview 15)
(10-9) Tenía . . . un ratón y una ratona; all of a
sudden salió panzona ella y tuvo thirteen
babies. ‘I had . . . a male mouse and a female
mouse; all of a sudden she got pregnant and
had thirteen babies.’ (interview 44)
In brief, code-switching is simply a style of speak-
ing among bilinguals that makes use of the two resources
available: English and Spanish. But since our concern in
this book is the Spanish language, we will give no more
discussion to code-switching.
Lexical Enrichment
The specter of English that gambols about in the every-
day conversations of Hispanics in our region grabs the
attention of speakers of other Spanish dialects. The more
thoughtful visitors may just consider this influence amus-
ing. The really thoughtful find it interesting. But many,
probably most, find it shocking, seeing it as an abhorrent
mongrelization of some pristine ideal.
But what we have in New Mexican Spanish is pre-
cisely the same phenomenon that occurs in language
Anglicisms
contact situations throughout the world. A Spanish-
speaking tourist with a prescriptivist bent listening to
conversations on the street is sure to be equally shocked
by the influence of Nahuatl in Mexican Spanish, of
Quechua in Peruvian Spanish, of Italian in Argentine
Spanish. Spanish speakers would do well to think about
how much of the language today was borrowed from
Arabic during the seven hundred years of Muslim domi-
nance in the Iberian Peninsula. Our perspective is to
appreciate the beauty in this diversity. We will see a lot of
New Mexican Spanish beauty in this chapter.
The linguistic influence of English has been limited
almost exclusively to the lexical inventory of New Mexi-
can Spanish. Of course, those who have developed only
a rudimentary command of the heritage language may
manifest rampant interference from English whenever
they attempt to speak Spanish. But those who have a
decent command of Spanish, such as the Bernalillo
woman quoted in example 10-1 or those cited more
briefly in examples 10-2 to 10-9, show no significant
influence of English in the fundamental structure of
their Spanish—that is, in the phonology, morphology,
or syntax.
Exactly parallel is the influence of Spanish on English
in the Southwest. English has absorbed an enormous
number of cultural loans from Spanish, such as tortilla,
lasso, rodeo, corral, and mesa. Smead (2004) documents
763 Spanish terms and expressions used in the English of
cowboys and ranchers of the western United States. Yet
Spanish has left no mark whatsoever on the basic gram-
matical and phonological structure of our English. Those
who believe otherwise about either English or Spanish
in the Southwest, need only take documentation to a
linguist to be proven wrong.
As in all language contact situations, it is in the dic-
tionary that the most striking influence occurs. The
Anglicisms used by speakers of New Mexican Spanish
have been well documented since the first studies of the
dialect a century ago by Elijah C. Hills (1906) and Aurelio
Macedonio Espinosa (1909, 1911–13, 1914–15). As we see in
chapter 4, for example, among the many words used for
‘Turkey’ in New Mexican Spanish, the 1 form that is most
strongly gaining ground is the Anglicism torque. Like
Medieval Spanish under the influence of Arabic or Middle
English under the influence of French, the vocabulary of
New Mexican Spanish has been enormously enriched
with the borrowing of new words and the semantic
extension of existing words. The extensiveness of English
borrowings in New Mexican Spanish has played a huge
role in creating a unique variety of Spanish.
167
 But just how extensive are those borrowings? It’s hard
to tell. For one thing, it depends on who the data come
from and what they’re talking about. Espinosa’s study of
English elements in the New Mexican Spanish of the early
twentieth century concludes with a vocabulary list of 375
Anglicisms (1914–15, 304–17). A quarter century later, Rael
(1937, 1:24) reports finding only 41 Anglicisms in the folk-
tales he collected from elderly residents of rural north-
ern New Mexico and southern Colorado—a collection
comprising six volumes of his dissertation, over two thou-
sand pages (later published separately, with more folktales
added, as Rael 1977, in which reference to the 41 English
borrowings is found on page 7). In Espinosa’s list, some 75
of the words are proper names. Should we count as Spanish
borrowing in English the names of the states Colorado
and Florida, or the names Juan and Rael? Then there is the
very, very thorny issue of established versus spontaneous
borrowings and of borrowing versus code-switching (see
Torres Cacoullos and Vigil 2003 and the references cited
there). We will not even attempt to characterize the number
of Anglicisms in New Mexican Spanish. It is substantial.
And by now it is certainly a more substantial number than
a century ago—and increasing all the time.
Anglicisms are found for all parts of speech. For
instance, we find verbs such as puchar or puchear ‘Push’
and requear ‘Wreck.’ There are adjectives such as fone
‘funny’ and flate ‘flat.’ Very commonly used in conversa-
tions are such phatic expressions as yunó ‘you know’ and
oquéi ‘OK’ and the English hesitation form uh (the vowel
[ә], or schwa) instead of the more typically Spanish eh or
este. For many speakers the conjunction so has completely
replaced conjunctive forms such as así que and to a lesser
extent the discourse marker entonces (examined in detail
in Aaron 2004). Notice the two sentences introduced by
so in example 10-10 uttered by a fifty-six-year-old man
from Pueblo, Colorado:
(10-10) Hablando con la gente de México con la
idomia mía, ellos no me entendían. Creían que
estaba yo loco como les hablaba porque cuando
decía, pus, “Ahi va una troca.” Pus, “¿Qué quiere
decir esa palabra troca,” me decía. “Pus, este, una
troca.” Dice, “No, pus, es una camioneta.” O un
carro que le decían camión. So ya es la diferencia.
Como en una vez también le dije a este señor, le
dije, “¿Quiere una banana?” Pus, “¿Qué quiere
decir banana?” “Pus, una banana. ¡Mire!” “No,
eso no es banana,” me dijo. “Eso es un plátano.”
So es mucha la diferencia en nuestra idomia.
‘When I would speak to someone from Mexico
168
with my language, they wouldn’t understand
me. They thought I was crazy the way I talked
to them because when I would say, well, “There
goes a truck.” Well, “What does that word troca
mean?” they’d say to me. “Well, this, a truck.”
They say, “Well, no, it’s a camioneta.” Or a
vehicle they call a camión. So right there’s the
difference. Like one time too I said to this guy,
I said, “Do you want a banana?” Well, “What
does banana mean?” “Well, a banana. Look!”
“No, that’s not a banana,” he said to me. “That’s
a plátano.” So there’s a lot of difference in our
language.’ (interview 58)
Even though Anglicisms can be found in most syn-
tactic categories, it is nouns that account for the vast
majority of the loanwords from English (just as they do
for the borrowings from Nahuatl, Taino, Arabic, French,
and any other language). We limit our further discussion
to some of these cases. These noun loans refer primar-
ily to objects and customs introduced into the region
through U.S. society and technology. They are cultural
borrowings that, as Espinosa says, have “not been a case
of fashion, luxury in speech, neglect of Spanish or mere
desire of imitating the language of the invaders, but an
actual convenience and necessity” (1914–15, 246).
Let us briefly consider a few examples of some of the
most widely used Anglicisms. We focus in this section
on those of such high frequency that they blanket the
NMCOSS area to such an extent that maps contrasting
the Anglicism and the native Spanish form are typically
unrevealing. We therefore introduce only one map in this
section of the chapter.
In the semantic field of modern transportation,
English was the convenient and necessary source for new
vocabulary. Of the 330 responses identifying a ‘Pickup’
(truck), for instance, 315 are Anglicisms. The overwhelm-
ingly favorite label is the generic troca (from English
truck), as seen in the previous example 10-10. All together,
there were 272 first choices for troca, including 34 dimin-
utive troquita. Map 10-1 illustrates how comprehen-
sively this Anglicism has saturated every corner of New
Mexican Spanish.
Although the masculine adaptation troque seems
to be the norm in Louisiana’s Isleño Spanish (Armistead
1992, 273), it is much less common than troca in the
NMCOSS area, being the preference of only 13 people,
mostly natives of the San Luis Valley of Colorado, as indi-
cated on the map. Another 23 consultants (not included
on the map) simply made use of the specific English word,
chapter ten
 10-1. ‘Pickup’

Anglicisms 169
usually pronounced as in English, pickup, but occasion-
ally with some adaptation to Spanish (e.g., pícap, picap).
Thus, fully 95% of the responses for ‘Pickup’ are loan-
words from English. Finally, proffers of words that in the
meantime became standard in Spanish are rare, just 9
responses of camioneta and 6 of camión. The distributions
of these 2 terms on map 10-1 show no particular associ-
ation with Border Spanish, reinforcing the point of the
ubiquity of troca even adjacent to the Mexican border.
We also asked 329 NMCOSS consultants to identify
a large ‘Semitruck,’ one of those huge eighteen-wheelers
that ply—and often plow up—our highways. Again, the
favored response is the basic troca (170 first choices),
although another 74 persons offered troca along with
some kind of descriptive modifier—usually simply troca
grande but also such forms as troca carguera, troca de
cargas, and troca fletera. (The reader making compari-
sons with the responses for ‘Pickup’ may want to know
that ‘Semitruck’ was elicited first and ‘Pickup’ later with 4
intervening means of transportation (airplane, train, bus,
and bicycle). There were also 12 augmentative forms of the
word: 9 trocón and 3 trocota. There was even 1 troquita,
but we need to point out that placing a diminutive suffix
on an everyday word is a frequent occurrence in identify-
ing objects in photographs at far less than life-size (and a
reason for not reading too much into the larger number
of troquita responses for ‘Pickup’). Only 7 persons
responded with troque, half as many as for ‘Pickup.’
Finally, many people (33 in all) used the English semai,
and 8 others employed adaptations of English trailer.
Only 16 people offered the basic Spanish word camión and
1 person offered the inappropriate camioneta, the stan-
dard word for ‘Pickup.’ In sum, 94% of the terms given for
‘Semitruck’ are Anglicisms.
And what you might get if you drive your troca too
fast is a tíquete ‘Ticket,’ though it’s always possible to talk
your way out of it:
(10-11) Me dijo que me había pasado una luz y le dije
que yo no la vide por el sol y ya no me dio tíquete.
‘He told me that I had run a red light and I told
him that I didn’t see it because of the sun and so
he didn’t give me a ticket.’ (interview 354)
To identify the object that a traffic officer was writing out
at the window of a stopped motorist, 290 of 319 consul-
tants (91%) responded with an Anglicism based on the
English ticket. And 272 of these responses were tíquete.
Only 9 persons each offered the more standard terms
cita and multa.
170
Household electricity is another phenomenon in-
troduced in the U.S. era, so in this semantic field too,
English was the vocabulary source of “actual convenience
and necessity.” Thus, to label the electrical ‘Outlet’ on a
wall, 82% of the 324 respondents employed some kind of
borrowing from English. And another 8% would provide
no response at all, a transparent manifestation of the
“Avoid English!” strategy. The principal Anglicisms were
integrated borrowings of English plug—either ploga (125
responses) or plogue (46 responses). But there were also 66
instances of unadapted English words, mostly outlet and
plug. The variety of English-based responses amounted to
82% of the responses for ‘Outlet.’ By way of contrast, only
14 consultants offered the standard Spanish term enchufe.
The situation is reversed among the more recently
arrived Hispanic population of Los Angeles surveyed
by Domínguez (1983). There, 64% of the responses were
enchufe and varied Anglicisms accounted for only 21%.
In similar fashion, to identify the ‘Plug’ at the end of
a lamp cord that plugs into the wall outlet, 35% responded
with ploga or plogue, and a further 26% offered an unin-
tegrated English word. Just as plug can be used in English
for both kinds of connection and as a verb, so can its
adaptation into Spanish:
(10-12) Ese es una ploga tamién pa’ ploguearla en la
ploga. ‘That’s a plug, too, for plugging it into the
outlet.’ (interview 291)
And to name the wall ‘Switch’ used to turn on the
lights, fully 80% offered some form of English switch:
suiche (191 responses), suich (39), and switch (35). It is of
interest to note that two-thirds of the Los Angeles sample
studied by Domínguez (1983) also offered the Anglicism
for ‘Switch’ even though a third of those subjects were
immigrants and another third children of immigrants.
In the realm of foods, features of U.S. culture were
convenient if not of actual necessity. Our discussion
regarding map 9-3 in the preceding chapter showed that
94% of our interviewees used some kind of Anglicism
for the stereotypically American ‘Pancakes,’ usually
panqueques. For several other edible goodies, similarly
high proportions of Anglicisms occur: 87% for ‘Cracker,’
86% for ‘Cake,’ and 68% for ‘Cookie.’ Also, 89% employed
an English borrowing for ‘Baking powder.’ This item
merits a little further commentary because the Anglicism
is so well disguised. Although 10 people gave simply
baking powder, 223 persons reported the term espauda
and another 34 offered variations of this form (espaura,
espaudra, espaure, and such). Espauda is an adaptation
chapter ten
of yeast powder. Although that term has now pretty much
disappeared from English and been replaced by baking
powder, it lives on in New Mexican Spanish.
And speaking of convenient but not powerfully
necessary borrowings, over two-thirds (69%) of the
NMCOSS sample labeled the December Christian holi-
day with an Anglicism, mostly Crismes, previously seen
in examples 6-7 and 8-7. Only 30% preferred the native
Spanish Navidad. We treat the ‘Christmas’ variable in
greater detail in chapter 14, but we may just note here that
the Anglicism is even incorporated into a traditional chil-
dren’s activity on Christmas Day—going house to house
to ask for Mis Crismes:
(10-13) Nos juntábanos todos los chiquitos y
gritábanos “Oremos, oremos, del cielo vinemos,”
y cantábanos Christmas carols, y pidíanos Mis
Crismes y nos abrían la puerta y siempre tenían
la gente . . . un cajete lleno de dulces y le daban
a uno ahi con la cuchara. ‘All of us little kids
would get together and yell out “Let’s pray, let’s
pray, we’ve come from heaven,” and we’d sing
Christmas carols, and we’d ask for Christmas
gift and they’d open the door and the people
always had . . . a tub full of candy and they’d give
you some there with a spoon.’ (interview 291)
The Mis Crismes phrase may derive from the greet-
ing Merry Christmas, but it is of interest to note that
Crismes is treated as a plural with which the possessive
mi shows agreement, so that the literal interpretation is
‘my Christmases.’
Finally, it is not at all surprising to find that U.S.
coins are referred to with borrowed forms. For exam-
ple, Anglicisms accounted for 71% of the responses for
‘Dime’ (almost always daime), for 81% of the responses for
‘Nickel’ (almost always nicle), and for 84% of the responses
for ‘Penny’ (almost always pene or peni, a topic to which
we return later).
Spoken English Source
Elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, borrowings
from English tend to come from the written language
and are pronounced according to the conventions of
Spanish orthography. Very different is the case of New
Mexican Spanish, where Anglicisms have almost always
entered via spoken English, not written English. A good
example is ‘Sweater.’ This Anglicism appears internation-
ally in Spanish. It has been adopted into the standard
Anglicisms
language and included in the DRAE, written as suéter and
pronounced accordingly with a /t/, reflecting the spell-
ing with t in English. In Colombian Spanish, for example,
this form of the Anglicism is used throughout the coun-
try (ALEC vol. 4, mapa 46).
In New Mexican Spanish, however, this pronunci-
ation is very much a minority variant. Only 54 persons
(16%) responded with this pronunciation. A full 4 out of
5 of our consultants (79% of the 329 responses) reported
the use of suera, a form that reflects the common U.S.
pronunciation of intervocalic /t/ after a stressed vowel as
a /d/-like sound equivalent to the tapped /r/ of Spanish. A
small minority of 12 consultants simply used the English
label sweater, pronounced with that /d/-like tap.
The geographical distribution of the 3 variants of this
variable (suera, suéter, and the unassimilated sweater)
yields no patterning of interest (see map 10-2) beyond
demonstrating that suera is the term of preference every-
where. We have found that it is often the case, however,
that when spatial distributions are unrevealing for an
item having considerable variation, social correlations
are likely to show up. In this case, for example, younger
speakers use suéter much more than those over forty, and
females show a slightly greater use of this standard form
than males. But it is educational factors that most affect
this variable. The more highly educated and those having
more years of formal study of Spanish tend to show a
higher preference for the form suéter, facts we’ll consider
in more detail in chapter 14.
Another Anglicism that displays contrasting variants
based on spoken and written English is ‘Mop,’ the long-
handled implement used to clean floors with a liquid. Fully
92% of the 326 NMCOSS responses were some form of the
English word. There are 2 integrated Anglicism variants
that reflect the spoken English pronunciation, phoneti-
cally [map]. These variants are mape (119 responses, 37%)
and mapa (17 responses, 5%). Another 2 integrated vari-
ants are based on the English spelling of mop with the
letter o. These variants are mope (108 responses, 33%) and
mopa (just 5 cases). But unlike the ‘Sweater’ variable, none
of these forms has been borrowed into standard Spanish.
So what is the basis for the occurrence of distinct forms?
Why isn’t there just a spoken language variant like mape,
since we might suppose that this Anglicism was intro-
duced primarily via oral communication?
Let’s look first at the implications from geography,
which presents a bit of a surprise. Map 10-3 reveals that
the written language variants mope and mopa are more
prominent in Traditional Spanish, particularly in north-
ern and eastern Traditional Spanish. And although there
171
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172 chapter ten

is considerable intermixture, the spoken language vari-
ants mape and mapa are more prominent in the south
and west. How did this unexpected distribution come
about? We have a speculative but plausible explanation
for the situation. Perhaps the importation of this U.S.
implement occurred quite early in the territorial period
when the Hispanic population—then located largely in
the Traditional Spanish area—was still mostly monolin-
gual and literacy was primarily in Spanish. Spanish liter-
acy then would be more attuned to the written form of
mop. On the other hand, progressively later incorporation
of this term—farther south and farther west—would have
been based more on the spoken form.
Once again, however, another explanatory contribu-
tion seems to be made by education. For example, only
15% of those who never completed high school offered the
writing-based variant mope but 43% of the high school
graduates did so. Similarly, just 18% of those who never
took a course in Spanish preferred mope but 43% of those
who had taken at least one course did so.
But such findings only raise other questions. Why
should higher levels of education have anything to do
with a concept that typically is discussed only in the
home and unlikely to come up in the Spanish language
classroom? And why should education relate to the choice
between two labels, neither of which is seen or heard in
other Spanish-speaking countries? The answer, as we
will point out on several occasions in this book, seems
to be that increased education leads to greater influence
of the written language in general and to an awareness of
Spanish spelling in particular.
It is not possible to compare our findings with those
of the Mexico atlas because of cultural differences. The
similar item in the ALM (mapa 895) is a rag used for
cleaning floors, since in Mexico the activity was typi-
cally carried out bent over or on hands and knees. The
usual response for this implement in Mexico and else-
where in the Americas is trapeador (derived from trapo
‘rag’). In the NMCOSS, trapeador was the label of prefer-
ence of just 17 consultants, and it is not surprising to find
on map 10-3 that almost all were natives of the Border
Spanish regions.
Not surprising also is the fact that neither mape nor
mope shows up on the ALM map. But it is of considerable
interest to find that 1 variant of the Anglicism does show
up in Mexico: the spoken language map- plus the suffix-
ation seen in trapeador. Mapeador was cited by 1 person
in Juárez (across the river from El Paso, Texas) and by
the majority of ALM consultants along Baja California
from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas. Furthermore, in the
Anglicisms
NMCOSS, there were 13 cases of mapeador and 7 of mope-
ador, and 17 of these 20 cases came from speakers in the
southern third of New Mexico. The labels for ‘Mop’ in
New Mexican Spanish expose a fascinating web of entan-
glements of linguistic, cultural, and historical issues.
Impact on Traditional Spanish
The influence of English vocabulary has been strongest in
the Traditional Spanish region. There are, however, some
intriguing exceptions to the “Anglicisms in the north”
generalization. We noted with regard to ‘Dipper’ in chap-
ter 7 (map 7-6) the curious case of a Nahuatlism (jumate)
in Traditional Spanish versus an Anglicism (dipa) in
Border Spanish.
The words for ‘Match’ (small wooden stick for light-
ing a fire) show a similar distribution, though in this
instance we have 3 major alternatives: fósforo, mecha,
and cerillo (see map 10-4). A total of 191 consultants (58%)
offered a fósforo-like response (114 fósforo, 60 fórforo,
15 fóforo, plus 2 more divergent forms). The map makes
clear that this is the term of preference in the Traditional
Spanish area. Fósforo also happens to be the standard
form of world Spanish.
Another 99 persons (30% of the 327 responses) gave
the Anglicism mecha as their term for ‘Match.’ Mecha is
characteristic of Border Spanish but also occurs scattered
throughout the area. Even more constrained to Border
Spanish is the third variant, cerillo, but it was preferred
much less often, by just 33 persons (10%). Alvar (2000,
217) reports mecha as the dominant term in Texas and
found only 1 case in New Mexico, near Las Cruces in the
far south, conforming to our findings.
Mecha is an Anglicism, but it is not a direct adapta-
tion of English match. A direct adaptation would more
likely be mache, and 2 persons did in fact offer this alter-
native (both were young, ages nineteen and thirty-four,
and very much natives of the rural Traditional Spanish
region). Instead of a direct borrowing, mecha for ‘Match’
involves the alteration of a native term. The standard
Spanish term mecha means ‘wick’ (e.g., in a candle or
lantern), another device that has a flame at its tip. The
existing label seems to have been semantically altered
under the influence of the phonologically similar match
in English.
Data from the Atlas lingüístico de México (mapa 843)
would appear to confirm that mecha is a result of English
influence. There is only 1 occurrence of mecha in the ALM,
on the South Texas border. The overwhelmingly preferred
term throughout Mexico is cerillo, which accords well with
173
 10-3. ‘Mop’

174 chapter ten

 10-4. ‘Match’

Anglicisms 175
the NMCOSS occurrence of cerillo in Border Spanish. It
is possible that the match stimulus was different in the
ALM; the typically Mexican waxy variety—‘wax’ is cera in
Spanish—might well be a reason for the prominence of the
cerillo term there. The more universal standard label is in
fact fósforo. But fósforo is very much a minority preference
in Mexico, appearing almost exclusively in the northwest
and south, the areas traditionally most remote (like Nuevo
México) from the cultural influence of Mexico City.
However, although Anglicisms like dipa and mecha
occasionally distinguish Border Spanish, perusal of the
geographical distribution of many Anglicisms shows that
the more common pattern is to find the English borrow-
ing deeply entrenched in the north and to find a native
Spanish word to hold firm in the extreme south and in
other areas of twentieth-century immigration from
Mexico, such as major cities (especially Albuquerque) and
eastern Colorado.
For example, map 10-5 charts the preferred words
for the thick homemade blanket-like bed cover, ‘Quilt,’
historically made of fabric scraps. The Anglicism cuilta
has a fairly well-delineated regional distribution. It
appears to be characteristic of the Traditional Spanish
of those long-established Hispanics of northern New
Mexico and southern Colorado and absent from the
Border Spanish of the later immigrants. The fact that this
typically American artifact tends to be found where the
winters are more severe may be pertinent, but it is also
likely that its present distribution results from the fact
that the earliest arriving Anglos became a significant
presence only in the northern part of the region.
Cuilta, cited earlier in example 8-10, was the most
common label for ‘Quilt’ among the NMCOSS consul-
tants; 119 persons (36% of 328 respondents) preferred this
term. In addition, 8 persons gave the English quilt, and
29 others mentioned cuilta other than as first choice.
The other 2 most frequent first choices were cobija with
78 preferences (24%) and colcha with 72 preferences
(22%). Cobija is more typically used for ‘Blanket’ in New
Mexican Spanish while colcha is more frequently used
for ‘Bedspread.’ Neither displays any strong geographi-
cal patterning in map 10-5, though colcha shows up more
prominently in the Border Spanish areas.
We pointed out earlier that 3 variables dealing with the
technological development of electricity show wholesale
adoption of English labels across the NMCOSS territory.
However, 1 electricity-related variable does display strong
geographical differentiation. Map 10-6 plots the locations
of the 2 principal labels for ‘Lightbulb.’ The Border Span-
ish preference is the standard term foco. The rather large
176
number of responses with this term (96, or 29%) corre-
lates with the intrusion of the term into the Traditional
Spanish area.
In contrast, the Traditional Spanish preference is globo,
the choice of 200 persons (60%). Globo may be a borrowing
of the English word globe. Although the English globe as
well as the standard Spanish globo now refer to the model
of the world or something having that shape, some speak-
ers of English use globe for ‘Lightbulb.’ The English word
globe and the Spanish word globo both also refer to the
transparent globular covering placed over a bare lightbulb
to soften its glare. And it also referred to the glass cover-
ing in an oil lamp. Thus, it is quite possible that the use of
globo for ‘Lightbulb’ in Traditional Spanish is simply the
extension of meaning of a preexisting word. Nevertheless,
even if that were the process, it appears to be an extension
that has not occurred in other Spanish-speaking countries.
This independent development in New Mexican Spanish
appears to be a result of contact with English.
But here again we find a conflict between usages. The
label globo is also the standard Spanish term for ‘Balloon.’
So for some speakers of New Mexican Spanish, globo
means ‘Lightbulb,’ for others it means ‘Balloon,’ and still
others use it for both meanings. We return to this issue
when we deal with ‘Balloon’ in chapter 15 with regard to
map 15-3.
We often find that an Anglicism is displacing a
long-established Spanish word that is characteristic
of Traditional Spanish. A good example is the label for
the U.S. twenty-five-cent coin ‘Quarter.’ Of the 4 most
frequently cited labels, 3 are displayed in map 10-7. The
1 with the highest preference rate is dos reales, offered
by 122 consultants (37% of the 328 queried for this item).
This label is a retention (archaism), a carryover from the
fifteenth century and the Spanish exploitation of the
fabulous Mexican silver mines that account for 60% of
the world’s silver today (Muñoz 1986). The coins produced
from that silver became the standard monetary system
around the globe, including being legal currency in the
United States until 1857. The basic unit in that system was
the abstract peso, the ‘piece of eight’ in the pirate’s booty,
which was divided into eight units called reales, the actual
coins. So a dos reales coin was one-fourth of a peso. In the
United States, those eighth pieces were called bits, whence
the term two bits for the twenty-five-cent coin.
Map 10-7 shows that dos reales for ‘Quarter’ is particu-
larly characteristic of Traditional Spanish. The breadth of
its present distribution suggests that it must have previously
been even more densely distributed across New Mexican
Spanish. Interestingly enough, dos reales is also reported
chapter ten
 10-5. ‘Quilt’

Anglicisms 177
 10-6. ‘Lightbulb’

178 chapter ten

 10-7. ‘Quarter’

Anglicisms 179
for the other long-isolated variety of Spanish in the United
States, the Louisiana Isleño dialect (Armistead 1992, 271).
However, an integrated borrowing from English,
cuara, is now common across the north and seems to
be gaining strength with each generation (as we explore
more fully in chapter 12). The first choice of a healthy 20%
of our consultants (65 persons) was cuara, which shows
the same adaptation as ‘Sweater’ for the /t/ and the rhota-
cized final vowel. Another 12 persons settled for the unas-
similated quarter. The fairly limited distribution of cuara
seen in map 10-7 suggests that it is a rather recent borrow-
ing. The gender assignment supports this assumption.
Although words that end in the vowel -a are usually femi-
nine, it is typically the case that words borrowed from
another language are initially assigned masculine gender
(except for reference to a sexually marked animate entity).
And indeed, most speakers treat this word as masculine,
that is, el cuara. We may assume, therefore, that the origi-
nal masculine gender assignment has been maintained
as the word became more integrated to Spanish phonol-
ogy. The minority of speakers who treat it as feminine,
that is, la cuara, seem to have taken a further step in the
integration process. (For a comprehensive examination of
gender assignment in Anglicisms based on data from the
NMCOSS, see Clegg 2006.)
Map 10-7 reveals that the Anglicism is not reported
at all in the southern third of New Mexico. Speakers of
Border Spanish clearly prefer what is transparently an
import from Mexico, the peseta label, the choice of 51
consultants (16%). The principal unit of money in Mexico
remains the peso, and the diminutive term peseta mean-
ing ‘small peso’ was long ago adopted unofficially there
to refer to the dos reales coin. The peseta designation
survived in Mexico while dos reales endured in Nuevo
México. And in another of those wonderful quirks of
linguistic history, the peseta label was adopted in 1868 as
the monetary unit of Spain.
Finally, a number of other speakers, 62 in total,
responded to the ‘Quarter’ stimulus with a numerical
descriptive, veinticinco centavos ‘twenty-five cents’ or un
veinticinco ‘a twenty-five-cent piece.’ The geographical
distributions of these terms are quite random and there-
fore are omitted from map 10-7.
A similar but much simpler case of an Anglicism
replacing a traditional term concerns the ‘Peanut’ variable.
Around the Spanish-speaking world the 2 most widely
used Spanish terms for this New World delight are borrow-
ings from Native American languages, the Taino loanword
maní and the Nahuatlism cacahuate (with a variant caca-
huete preferred by the DRAE). Cacahuate is, of course, the
180
usual label in Mexico. It is also the preferred label in our
survey, accounting for 83% of our 335 responses (278 first
choices). We received not 1 suggestion of the maní variant.
But we did get 38 preferences (11%) for the English borrow-
ing pinate. Consider the distribution of this Anglicism on
map 10-8. It is reported exclusively in the rural northern
outposts of New Mexican Spanish. Although the numbers
are small, the Anglicism has penetrated the shell of this
once strongly rooted Nahuatlism that links New Mexican
Spanish so closely to Mexican Spanish.
Several other variables that provide good illustra-
tions of this northern distribution of Anglicisms are
discussed in other chapters. See, for example, the occur-
rences of parte for ‘Part’ (in hair, map 11-4), templo for
‘Temple’ (of head, map 11-12), popcorn for ‘Popcorn’ (map
12-6), áiscrim and similar variants for ‘Ice cream’ (map
12-7), and balún for ‘Balloon’ (map 15-3). Still other cases
that we do not map, such as reque (versus accidente or
choque) for ‘Wreck, accident,’ show the same pattern.
Linguistic Integration of Anglicisms
We have seen, then, that there are Anglicisms that cover
the entire NMCOSS territory, those that epitomize Border
Spanish, and those that epitomize Traditional Spanish.
But also quite common is a fourth category: cases where
the Anglicism occurs everywhere but with different vari-
ants in Traditional Spanish and Border Spanish.
Map 10-9 for the variable ‘Cracker’ (the baked wafer)
exemplifies this pattern of differentiating Anglicisms even
though an important native Spanish variant complicates the
picture. The fully integrated form craque dominates numer-
ically in our survey. It is the preferred label for fully 77% of
our respondents (258 persons). Almost 9 out of 10 of these
responses are the bare form craque, though some people
appended modifiers to yield craque de soda (‘soda cracker,’
15 cases) and craque salado (‘salted cracker,’ 18 cases).
Map 10-9 makes clear that craque is the norm in
Traditional Spanish. A slightly different but still fully
integrated form of this Anglicism is the variant craca,
which has a final /a/ instead of /e/ and feminine gender,
that is, la craca, as opposed to masculine gender el craque.
The numbers are much smaller for craca, the choice of just
22 persons (7% of the total responses). Regardless, craca
turns out to be the most common label in one portion of
Border Spanish, a stretch of southern New Mexico from
Alamogordo west.
Map 10-9 shows that a third variant, the standard
Spanish term galleta (a borrowing of French galette), is
also a primarily Border Spanish phenomenon. It was the
chapter ten
 10-8. ‘Peanut’

Anglicisms 181
 10-9. ‘Cracker’

182 chapter ten

choice of 37 consultants, 11% of the sample. There were
also 3 responses (not included on the map) of the dimin-
utive galletita in the same region. Unlike craque and
craca (which was never presented with a modifier), the
majority of the galleta responses occurred with a “salt”
modifier—galleta de sal (10 cases), galleta salada (10
cases), and galleta de soda (3 cases). This modification no
doubt results from a recognition that galleta also means
‘Cookie,’ a variable to which we now turn.
Craque and craca seem to be equally integrated
into the Spanish phonological and morphological
systems. More typical when we find different forms of
the Anglicism in the two areas is that the Traditional
Spanish form is more fully integrated. ‘Cookie’ illustrates
the degree-of-integration phenomenon, but once again
the big picture is somewhat distorted by the fact that, in
addition to the 2 major Anglicisms cuque and cuqui, we
find an important standard Spanish term, galleta, and
several other minor variants.
Let’s begin the discussion with the more straightfor-
ward data, the Anglicisms. In map 10-10, we see that the
variant for ‘Cookie’ most prevalent in the south is cuqui,
the label preferred by 55 of the 339 respondents overall
(16%). This realization is phonetically adapted to Spanish,
but it retains from English the final phoneme /i/. Although
Spanish has words with stressed final /i/ (e.g., salí ‘I left,’
aquí ‘here,’ sí ‘yes’), an unstessed final /i/ as in cuqui is a
very marked feature that occurs extremely rarely in the
language. Of the 130 or so words of two or more syllables
ending in unstressed i listed in Stahl and Scavnicky’s A
reverse dictionary of the Spanish Language (1973)—which
includes all entries in the eighteenth edition of the DRAE
(1956), almost every one is a cultivated borrowing from
Latin or a loanword from some other language, of which
the only ordinary examples are taxi and yanqui. The only
common native Spanish case is the adverb casi ‘almost’—
and casi is the only 1 of these words that is included by
Juilland and Chang-Rodríguez (1964) among the 5,024
most frequently occurring words in Spanish.
On the other hand, the common manifestation of
the Anglicism in Traditional Spanish is a more phono-
logically integrated cuque, the choice of 151 persons (46%).
This version has a final /e/ that occurs with high frequency
in Spanish. The difference between the partially adapted
cuqui and the fully assimilated cuque suggests a temporal
difference in the borrowing process. That is, the Border
variant may be a more recent addition to Spanish while the
Traditional variant was adopted longer ago and has become
more Spanish-like as it passed across more generations.
Anglicisms
Turning now to the standard Spanish label galleta,
we have several stories to tell. A total of 70 consultants
(21%) prefer this term for ‘Cookie.’ As we see in map 10-10,
galleta is typical of the Border Spanish areas, though it
has also made modest inroads into Traditional Spanish
territory. Recall that speakers of Border Spanish also often
use galleta to label the preceding variable, ‘Cracker’ (map
10-9). Galleta is also used to label both these edibles in
Mexico and elsewhere. An amusing consequence appar-
ently associated with this semantic variability is that 6
consultants chose to call our ‘Cookie’ a craque—includ-
ing in 1 case a ‘sweet cracker,’ craque dulce!
Notice also that far more consultants offered galleta
for ‘Cookie’ than for ‘Cracker’ (70 responses to 40). And
while 24 people added a modifier to galleta for ‘Cracker,’
only 2 added one for ‘Cookie,’ in both cases galleta dulce.
Thus, the more basic or unmarked meaning for those who
use galleta might appear to be ‘Cookie.’
But the twists in this story are more convoluted.
Galleta happens to be also the most popular term in
New Mexican Spanish for what we in the United States
call a ‘Biscuit.’ It was preferred by 176 of 332 consultants
(53%), which includes 16 cases of the diminutive galle-
tita. But, as we can see in map 10-11, galleta in this mean-
ing happens to be associated primarily with Traditional
Spanish, not Border Spanish. The tendency in Border
Spanish areas is to use borrowings from English, mostly
integrated bísquete (59 cases in all) and unintegrated
biscuit (45 cases), though the majority of occurrences
of these Anglicisms actually show up in the Traditional
Spanish area.
A handful of our consultants offered galleta as the
label for all 3 of these variables, ‘Cracker,’ ‘Cookie,’ and
‘Biscuit.’ And many more used the term for 2 of them.
Of course, this variation will not surprise anyone famil-
iar with variation in English. After all, in British English
biscuit has a very different meaning. In fact, biscuit is
used for both ‘Cracker’ and ‘Cookie’ in England. The
unity in this variation in both English and Spanish is
that all 3 variables are small baked items having less leav-
ening than bread.
Now the plot thickens even more. In the NMCOSS
area, bizcochito (usually spelled biscochito here) typical-
ly refers to a cinnamon- or anise-flavored cookie espe-
cially associated with Christmas. Now, the stimulus
picture for ‘Cookie’ in our survey was quite different,
quite obviously a chocolate chip cookie (or perhaps a
raisin cookie for those whose eyesight was not keen).
Nonetheless, 22 persons called it a bizcochito and 4 others
183
 10-10. ‘Cookie’

184 chapter ten

 10-11. ‘Biscuit’

Anglicisms 185
a bizcocho. All of these responses, accounting for 8% of
the ‘Cookie’ labels, came from speakers representing
rural communities in the Traditional Spanish area.
Bizcocho is an old, old term in Spanish that was used,
and is still used in some places, to refer to a baked item
cooked a second time for preservation purposes, like the
English hardtack. It derives from Latin bi- ‘two’ (as in bicy-
cle and such) and coctus ‘cooked’ and therefore has the
literal historical meaning ‘twice cooked.’ We see this same
form also in the now popular Italian biscotto, which we
may be more familiar with in the plural biscotti. This same
Latin origin holds for English biscuit. It seems inevitable,
then, that we’d encounter a few speakers who would use
this old term also for our ‘Biscuit’ variable: 5 consultants
called it a bizcocho and another 2 preferred bizcochito.
Well, after that extended excursion, let us return to
the topic of this section—the linguistic integration of
Anglicisms—while continuing the topic of good things
to nibble on. The finding of a less integrated form in the
southern part of the NMCOSS region shows up also with
the ‘Cake’ variable. Map 10-12 displays the responses
offered to identify the picture of an elegant wedding
cake. The dominant form throughout the region with
the exception of the extreme south is the fully inte-
grated Anglicism queque, by itself accounting for nearly
three-quarters (73%) of the responses (247 of 337). In the
south, by contrast, there is a modestly distinct form of
the Anglicism, quequi, again having a final /i/ instead of
/e/. Since /i/ is a more marked vowel in word-final posi-
tion, we may reasonably take the perspective that the
Traditional variant with final /e/ is the more integrated
form and the other variant the more recent borrowing.
But 2 forms, in fact, are characteristic of Border
Spanish: the not-yet-fully-integrated quequi with 36 first
choices (11%) and pastel with 47 responses (14%). Pastel
is a common term for ‘Cake’ in many countries, includ-
ing Mexico. The prominence of pastel in the south rein-
forces the idea that quequi is a more recent borrowing
competing with the Mexican label of twentieth-century
immigration.
Having a distribution pattern very similar to that
of quequi and queque are the 2 principal variants of the
variable ‘Penny,’ another 2 Anglicisms with the same
final vowel contrast. The /i/-final peni is characteristic of
Border Spanish (see map 10-13) while the /e/-final pene is
characteristic of Traditional Spanish. Of the 327 consul-
tants asked to identify this coin, 200 responded with pene
(61%) and 69 with peni (21%).The remaining responses
were mostly un centavo ‘one cent,’ which are not included
186
on the map since they are widely dispersed around the
NMCOSS territory, though appearing with somewhat
greater frequency in the Border Spanish areas.
Again, we may suppose that the /e/-final variant is
more fully integrated and that the /i/-final variant is still in
the process of integration. However, another possible influ-
ence on the form of the borrowing and the distribution of
the variants is the existence of pene as the standard Spanish
word for ‘penis.’ Speakers of Traditional Spanish do not
generally know (or at least use) pene with this meaning,
though they have of course the usual variety of euphemis-
tic, onomatopoetic, and slang equivalents at their disposal
(for example, in case you’re curious, la cosa ‘the thing,’ el
güigüi ‘the wee-wee,’ el pájaro ‘the bird,’ la picha, la pinga,
la verga). But it may be that those Hispanics with closer
ties to Mexico—that is, speakers of Border Spanish—have
a higher awareness of this more taboo meaning and there-
fore resist integration of English penny to full homonymy.
Yet another Anglicism participating in a simi-
lar change in progress is the variable ‘Suit,’ referring to a
man’s clothing ensemble. In this case, however, each of the
Anglicisms is competing with a separate native Spanish
word. As we noted earlier in chapter 5, the Tradi­tional
Spanish term for a man’s suit is vestido or vistido (and we
need to clarify again that while it is a woman’s dress that is
labeled vestido in standard Spanish, the term for this female
clothing in Traditional Spanish is usually túnico).
The vestido/vistido label for ‘Suit’ is the one most
widely reported in our survey, representing 129 of the
328 responses (39%). It is a prominent feature of Tradi­
tional Spanish (see map 10-14). But we see that this tradi-
tional term is receiving stiff competition in the Traditional
Spanish region from the Anglicism sute, preferred by 104
consultants (32%). This variant sute fully conforms to the
phonological structure of Spanish.
Meanwhile, the label of preference in Border Span­
ish is the standard traje, favored by 61 persons (19%).
This variant is in turn being challenged by English suit,
which received only 26 first choices (just 8% of the total
responses). Most speakers produced a tensed Spanish
/u/ in this form that could equally well be represented as
sut. But whether suit or sut, it represents a nonintegrated
Anglicism because a word-final /t/ is alien to Spanish.
So again we find the integrated version of the Anglicism
(sute) in the north and the nonintegrated version
(suit or sut) in the south. The small number of the latter
and its retention of its English trappings suggest again
the recency of the introduction of the Anglicism in
the south.
chapter ten
 10-12. ‘Cake’

Anglicisms 187
 10-13. ‘Penny’

188 chapter ten

 10-14. ‘Suit’

Anglicisms 189
 Conclusion
The examination of English influence reveals that there is
considerable instability in New Mexican Spanish. After
four hundred years of resilient survival, this Spanish
across much of the territory of its heritage is at last not
being transmitted to the younger generations. More and
more Hispanics of New Mexico and southern Colorado
are essentially monolingual in English. At the same time,
for those who continue to speak Spanish, the incorpora-
tion of English vocabulary continues apace.
We have seen that the fate of an Anglicism in New
Mexican Spanish is controlled by a number of factors,
but the most important factor is time. After more than
a century and a half of intense and intimidating contact
with English, the speech of those speakers of New
Mexican Spanish who have good proficiency in Spanish
still doesn’t seem to contain an excessive number of
Anglicisms. An analysis by Clegg (2006, 44) finds that
about 10% of New Mexican Spanish nouns are of English
origin, but his analysis is based on a liberal interpretation
of Anglicism that includes not just integrated borrowings
such as troca for ‘truck’ but conversational occurrences of
any lone English noun (such as hopscotch) or compound
(such as washing machine) as well as arguable cases such
as botella ‘bottle,’ televisión ‘television,’ and tren ‘train.’
190
But however Anglicisms are counted, as in other bilingual
situations, the borrowings represent useful new terms
introduced through the culture of the other language.
We also see that the incorporation of a loanword across
a speech community is not instantaneous. As many of our
examples show, the integration of borrowings may be a
slow process that endures over several or even many gener-
ations. The process is ongoing in the NMCOSS region, and
in many cases the phonological integration starts in the
Traditional Spanish area. In this connection, it is relevant
to note that all 6 of the fully integrated Anglicisms previ-
ously discussed (bísquete, craque, cuque, pene, queque,
and sute) were already documented in Aurelio Espinosa’s
research on Traditional Spanish at the beginning of the
twentieth century (data most easily accessed in Gross 1935,
which is a compilation of words that Espinosa cites in vari-
ous works).
Those examples indicate that the greater influence of
English has been on the Traditional Spanish dialect. Yet
other forces are impinging on that dialect. The Mexican
Spanish brought by increasing numbers of immigrants and
the standard Spanish typically promoted in the classroom
are becoming more prominent and infiltrating the speech
of speakers far removed from the Mexican border.
chapter ten
 Chap ter 11
Mexicanisms
The Erratic Influence
of the Homeland
• While New Mexican Spanish has enjoyed a long
four-hundred-year history of independent evolu-
tion in the local setting, it has, nonetheless, maintained
ties to the Spanish of Mexico, both in its origins and in
continued contact right up to the present. For example, it
was a native of Durango, Mexico, one Jesús María Baca,
who introduced the first printing press to the region,
publishing among many other things the first New
Mexico magazine, El Crepúsculo de la Libertad (‘The
Dawn of Liberty’), in 1834. And Octaviano Larrazolo,
who was elected governor of New Mexico in 1918 and later
became the first Hispanic elected to the U.S. Senate, was
born in Chihuahua in 1859 and came to the United States
as a ten-year-old child. Illustrating the cultural exchange
in the opposite direction, José Manuel Gallegos, an influ-
ential New Mexican politician who became the terri-
tory’s first delegate to the U.S. Congress, was born in
Abiquiú in 1815 but as a young man went to Durango,
Mexico, where he studied theology and was ordained to
the priesthood.
The political boundary between the United States
and Mexico has made it convenient to pretend that the
Spanish spoken on the two sides are very different. In fact,
however, there has been very little comparative research
carried out. Most studies of Spanish in the U.S. Southwest
have been of very narrow scope, examining the speech of
a single small community. Comparative comments relat-
ing this Spanish to the Spanish on the Mexican side of the
border are rare; our earlier report (Vigil and Bills 2000b)
is quite exceptional as an explicit exploration of the possi-
bilities. But the ties that bind are transparently obvious
and merit continued examination.
To explore the connections, the NMCOSS is very
fortunate to now have the fruits of a parallel dialect
geography investigation for the other side of the border,
the comprehensive Atlas lingüístico de México (Lope
Blanch et al. 1990–2000). Directed from the beginning
by Juan M. Lope Blanch of the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, data collection for the ALM was
actually initiated in 1967, although the major part of the
data collection was accomplished between 1970 and 1979
(Lope Blanch 1991, 157). The publication of the six hugely
impressive (and impressively huge!) volumes of the atlas
was finally completed in 2000, just before Lope Blanch’s
191
death. The ALM maps that we cite here are based on the
responses from 602 informants representing all areas of
Mexico (Gardner 1985, 174).
The ALM and NMCOSS make it possible for the
first time in the Americas to carry out a transnational
analysis of Spanish dialect geography. The two projects
share features in common that permit the comparison
of a large number of items. In fact, the specific elicita-
tion component of the NMCOSS project was modeled
after the questionnaire utilized in the ALM and was
elaborated to a great extent under Lope Blanch’s guid-
ance at a 1988 meeting in Mexico City. This meeting
was intended to spur a larger Southwest project across
five states (Lope Blanch 1990b describes the activity at
that meeting), though plans for the other three border
states have faltered. Lope Blanch was interested in
expanding the scope of the ALM into the Southwest
and had already done a pilot survey in the mid-1980s
at the same time that we independently began to plan
the NMCOSS project. He interviewed 19 persons in four
Southwest communities: San José, California; Tucson,
Arizona; Mora, New Mexico; and San Marcos, Texas.
From this survey he produced four studies, all of which
are reprinted in his El español hablado en el suroeste de
los Estados Unidos: Materiales para su estudio (1990a),
a remarkable documentation of the Spanish of those
four communities. This book contains a summary of all
responses to the grammatical and lexical items of the
ALM questionnaire used (59–98), and two-thirds of the
volume (99–331) is devoted to the full transcription of
thirty minutes of “spontaneous conversation” for each
of the 19 interviews.
This chapter focuses on the geographical distribu-
tions of selected items that are included in both the ALM
and the NMCOSS. These items illustrate four categories
of variation in New Mexican Spanish vis-à-vis Mexican
Spanish: (1) items that are widely used in both Mexico
and the NMCOSS region, revealing again the essential
“Mexicanness” of New Mexican Spanish; (2) items that
are documented almost exclusively in New Mexican
Spanish, reflecting both independent developments and
retention of lexical items that were used in earlier peri-
ods; (3) items that have restricted distribution in Mexico
and whose occurrence in New Mexican Spanish appears
to reveal historical patterns of migration or influence;
and (4) items that are prominently employed in Mexico
but that have only recently made an entrance into New
Mexico and southern Colorado, representing contri-
butions of recent Mexican immigration or exposure to
standard Spanish. This last category will be dealt with
192
in chapters 14 and 15. The other three will be considered
separately in the following sections.
Mexican and New Mexican
Speakers of different dialects who come into contact do
not usually fix on the similarities in their speech. It is the
differences that are noticed. This is certainly the case when
speakers of Mexican Spanish and New Mexican Spanish
come into contact, as is apparent from the words of a
seventy-two-year-old woman from Cortez, Colorado:
(11-1) La gente de México habla mucho diferente
de nojotroj. ‘People from Mexico speak a lot
different than us.’ (interview 318)
So it is important to emphasize at the outset that
New Mexican Spanish really is Mexican Spanish, that
is, it forms part of the Mexican Spanish “macro-dialect”
(Lozano 1977) or “super-dialect” (Cárdenas 1975). Thus,
the grammatical structures and pronunciation features
of the Spanish of the two regions are identical except for a
few independent developments such as those noted previ-
ously. For example, characteristic of both Mexican and
New Mexican Spanish is the extreme weakening of the /y/
sound between two vowels and even total elimination of
the /y/ where the preceding vowel is /i/ or /e/:
(11-2) E’a se ‘amaba Julianita. = Ella se llamaba
Julianita. ‘Her name was Julianita.’
(interview 306)
It is extremely common for the same linguistic detail
to be widespread in both Mexico and the NMCOSS
region. And these commonalities show up even in the
data of linguistic atlases, which are designed to focus
on forms that show variation, that show differences. For
example, we note in chapter 7 with regard to map 7-2 that
the Nahuatlism cuates for ‘Twins’ saturates the NMCOSS
territory, reported by 87% of our consultants. Cuates is
also the dominant term in Mexico. Mapa 946 of the ALM
indicates that about two-thirds of the subjects in that
survey report the Nahuatlism. This preference occurs in
spite of the much greater exposure in Mexico to standard
Spanish gemelos through schooling and the media.
The label for ‘Ewe’ (the adult female sheep) presents
a similar concurrence on the two sides of the border. For
the DRAE, the accepted term for the adult is oveja and the
nonadult of one to two years is borrega. Map 11-1, however,
demonstrates that in New Mexican Spanish there is a
chapter eleven
 11-1. ‘Ewe’

Mexicanisms 193
high degree of consensus that the term for the adult is
borrega, preferred by 89% of the consultants (303 of 341).
In contrast, only 21 persons (6%) provided the standard
term oveja. Almost as many (20 persons) gave an erro-
neous word (e.g., cabra and chiva ‘goat,’ yegua ‘mare’) or
could offer no Spanish word at all.
The ALM finds a strong showing for borrega in Mexico
as well (mapa 662). Of the 193 communities surveyed,
borrega was the more often cited term in 170 (88%).
Oveja was cited more often in only 14 communities (7%).
Nevertheless, the DRAE fails to acknowledge this obvi-
ously important dialect variant.
The ‘Hummingbird’ is a New World bird. The 2
labels for this bird that are perhaps most widely used in
the Spanish-speaking world are colibrí, a borrowing from
a Caribbean Native American language, and picaflor, a
word created by compounding (literally ‘flower-pecker’).
But neither of these words is used with any frequency in
Mexican or New Mexican Spanish. The compound chupar-
rosa (literally ‘rose-sucker’) is the term in the NMCOSS
(see map 11-2). A total of 216 of the 339 respondents (64%)
gave this term. But another 45 persons claimed to use only
the English label hummingbird and 49 others could give
no response at all. That is, chuparrosa accounts for fully
89% of the 245 responses that employed a Spanish word.
It also accounts for 90% of the responses in the five-state
Southwest study of Pedrero (2002, 313). In the NMCOSS
survey, the second most frequent Spanish word offered
(with just 9 first choices) was mariposa, the general Spanish
word for ‘Butterfly.’ Only 4 persons chose colibrí and
another 4 picaflor.
Chuparrosa is also the label of preference in Mexico
(ALM mapa 614), and was reported by all 60 of Mendoza
Guerrero’s informants in the state of Sinaloa (2002, 63).
Picaflor was mentioned by only 1 person in the ALM
survey; colibrí was a bit more common but was usually
cited as an alternative form. Chuparrosa dominates
everywhere except in southeast Mexico, where it is
displaced by 2 similar compounds, chupamirto (‘myrtle-
sucker’) and chupaflor (‘flower-sucker’). None of our
NMCOSS consultants offered either of these forms.
There are many other words that prove to be over-
whelmingly dominant in the NMCOSS as well as in the
ALM. It is not easy to calculate precise percentages from
the ALM maps, but the selected cases presented in exam-
ples 11-3 and 11-4 appear to represent at least two-thirds
of the Mexican responses. The NMCOSS percentage
cited in each case represents the proportion of Spanish
responses only, excluding from the calculation all
English responses and when no responses were offered.
194
Some of these shared lexical items are nothing more
than the Spanish variant that is practically universal. For
instance:
(11-3) bragueta ‘Fly’ (of pants), 91% of NMCOSS
responses (ALM mapa 914)
chato ‘Pug-nosed,’ 89% of NMCOSS responses
(ALM mapa 760)
colgar ‘Hang’ (a mirror on wall), 98% of NMCOSS
responses (ALM mapa 934)
corva ‘Back of knee,’ 77% of NMCOSS responses
(ALM mapa 753)
coser ‘Sew,’ 98% of NMCOSS responses
(ALM mapa 902)
garrapata ‘Tick’ (the insect), 80% of NMCOSS
responses (ALM mapa 624)
hilo ‘Thread,’ 96% of NMCOSS responses
(ALM mapa 903)
relámpago ‘Lightning,’ 77% of NMCOSS responses
(ALM mapa 696)
tenedor ‘Fork,’ 97% of NMCOSS responses
(ALM mapa 885)
Other examples are more characteristic of this
particular region of the Spanish-speaking world and
distinct from the labels the DRAE considers standard:
(11-4) abrochar(se) ‘Button up,’ 83% of NMCOSS
responses (ALM mapa 933) versus abotonarse
elote ‘Ear of corn,’ 63% of NMCOSS responses
(ALM mapa 828) versus maíz en la mazorca
ensartar ‘Thread a needle,’ 88% of NMCOSS
responses (ALM mapa 904) versus enhebrar
lagañas ‘Sleep’ (matter in the eye), 96% of NMCOSS
responses (ALM mapa 718) versus legaña
lonche ‘Lunch’ (taken to work or school), 95% of
NMCOSS responses (ALM mapa 823) versus
almuerzo, merienda, or fiambre
Sometimes, both regions display the widespread use
of 2 variants but without significant geographical associa-
tions. This is the case for the stem vowel of the verb cocer
‘cook,’ which is variably diphthongized under stress. The
NMCOSS results for ‘I cook’ (map 11-3) show that both cozo
and cuezo occur throughout the area, though cozo seems
to be a bit more associated with Border Spanish. Cuezo,
however, accounts for 81% of all responses (252 cases) and
cozo only 15% (45 cases). The ALM map (mapa 573) displays
a much higher use of cozo and a more balanced, and appar-
ently random, distribution of the 2 forms.
chapter eleven
 11-2. ‘Hummingbird’

Mexicanisms 195
 11-3. ‘I cook’

196 chapter eleven

 Creatively New Mexican
The three previous chapters of part 3 have provided
numerous examples of vocabulary that is pretty much
unique to New Mexican Spanish, Traditional Spanish
in particular. Some of these non-Mexican words arose
through independent development. For example, trucha
for ‘Fish’ (see map 8-6), arrear for ‘Drive’ (an automobile)
(see map 8-9), and ratón volador for ‘Bat’ (see map 8-11).
Others came about through exposure to other languages
in the local setting, for example, cunques for ‘Crumbs’
(see map 9-2), puela for ‘Skillet’ (see map 9-4), and troca
for ‘Pickup’ (see map 10-1). Here we’ll give only a few addi-
tional examples of such non-Mexican characteristics.
An instance of independent development that
appears to reflect English influence of a less direct nature
than outright borrowing is the use of parte for the ‘Part’
in a person’s hair. Although surely influenced by English,
this form also would appear to be an adaptation from the
related native Spanish forms partida, partido, and parti-
dura. All 4 of these forms surfaced in our survey. It is curi-
ous that none of the 4 is listed in either edition of Cobos
(1983, 2003), and only parte is listed by L. Trujillo (1983).
Map 11-4 shows that parte is far and away the
preferred term for ‘Part’ in the NMCOSS results, account-
ing for fully 71% of all responses (222 of 311). It is over-
whelmingly dominant in the Traditional Spanish area.
And it is apparently unique to New Mexican Spanish.
It is not attested at all in the ALM (mapa 733). However,
Lope Blanch (1990a, 83) reports it mentioned by 2 subjects
in San José, California, in addition to all 4 of his New
Mexican subjects.
Instead, partido is the most prominent among
several important Mexican variants. Only 10 NMCOSS
consultants offered this form. The second most common
of the part- forms in Mexico is partidura, which is promi-
nent in north-central and western Mexico and is particu-
larly dominant in the state of Chihuahua, our immediate
neighbor. In the NMCOSS, partidura came in second to
parte but was offered as a first response by only 33 individ-
uals (11%). As map 11-4 shows, its distribution is limited to
the southernmost part of New Mexico, plus a few cases
in Albuquerque, areas where the influence of Chihuahua
would be most expected. The other part- form, the femi-
nine gender partida, is a minor player in Mexico, repre-
sented mostly in the northwest. It also plays a minor role
in New Mexican Spanish, offered by just 11 NMCOSS
consultants. Partido and partida are combined for display
on map 11-4. They too are found mostly in areas of twenti-
eth-century Mexican influence.
Other important Mexican labels hardly occur in the
Mexicanisms
NMCOSS. The second most popular term after partido in
the ALM is raya. We received only 2 preferences for raya
in the NMCOSS. And we received not a single token of
4 other terms that are dialectally significant in Mexico:
apartado in the northeast of Mexico, carrera in the north-
west, and camino and vereda in southern Mexico and the
Yucatán Peninsula.
A comparable case of likely English influence on an
existing form is the word for ‘Cup,’ pictured as a tradi-
tional teacup set in a saucer and holding steaming coffee.
As anyone familiar with Spanish might expect, the label
in Mexico is taza (see mapa 886 of the ALM); there are
only occasional occurrences in Mexico of a few alterna-
tive forms such as pocillo, the usual term in Colombia
(ALEC vol. 4, mapa 134).
But New Mexican Spanish is a bit different. Here we
have an even split between 2 forms: 160 preferences for
taza (49%) and 168 preferences for copa (51%). Map 11-5
indicates that both labels are spread around fairly evenly
but with taza being somewhat favored in the Border
Spanish areas. There were also 2 responses of cope from 2
young men (ages nineteen and twenty-seven) with poor
skills in Spanish, but no pocillo or any other variant.
Where does that copa come from? “Well, English, of
course,” might be assumed. Not so fast! Copa is a perfectly
fine Spanish word with a long pedigree back to Latin
cuppa, which is also the source of English cup. Taza, on
the other hand, is a loanword from Arabic. Furthermore,
copa, like taza, refers to a small vessel from which to drink
liquids. Elsewhere in Spanish, though, it is a more glass-
like container (a goblet or wineglass) and is not what would
typically hold coffee. So it is very likely that the presence
of English has beguiled speakers of New Mexican Spanish
into using copa for a coffee cup. And the result is a singular
feature of New Mexican Spanish. Not a single occurrence
of copa for ‘Cup’ appears in ALM mapa 886.
Sometimes the NMCOSS-ALM comparison can leave
us puzzled. Map 11-6 gives the NMCOSS distributions for
variants of the verb ‘Shear’ (to cut the wool from sheep).
We find 2 principal variants, trasquilar and tresquilar.
We exclude from this map all other responses—English
responses, no responses, and nonspecific descriptive
terms such as cortar la lana ‘cut off the wool’ and quitar
la lana ‘take off the wool’—which altogether total 27%,
a reasonable proportion of vocabulary loss concerning a
very traditional agrarian activity.
The standard trasquilar variant is strongly repre-
sented in the region, preferred by just about one-third
of the consultants (111 of 336). But the more widely used
form in the NMCOSS is tresquilar, the choice of 40% of
197
 11-4. ‘Part’

198 chapter eleven

 11-5. ‘Cup’

Mexicanisms 199
 11-6. ‘Shear’

200 chapter eleven

our consultants (133 persons). Cobos (2003) cites both
variants, but L. Trujillo (1983) includes neither. The map
reveals the second variant to be particularly characteristic
of the Traditional Spanish area.
Trasquilar is the majority form in Mexico (mapa
666). The tresquilar alternative occurs only twice in the
ALM, both in the city of Santa Teresa in the northeast-
ern state of Tamaulipas on the Gulf of Mexico coast.
There would seem to be little historical connection here.
So we might happily assume that tresquilar is another
creation of Traditional Spanish. However, Santamaría
(1959) includes this variant with /e/ in the first syllable in
his Diccionario de mejicanismos, calling it a “vulgarismo
común por trasquilar” (‘popular term commonly used in
place of trasquilar’). Perhaps that vulgar tresquilar was
once more widely used in Mexico and has now given way
to the standard label? If so, this Traditional Spanish term
becomes not an innovation but simply another of the
many retentions of popular Mexican Spanish.
We conclude this discussion of departures from the
Mexican connection with a fascinatingly complex case
of variation, the development of a merger for reference to
bees and wasps, 2 flying insects that sting. Let’s first look
at map 11-7 for ‘Honeybee.’ In contrast to the clear domi-
nance of abeja in Mexico (ALM mapa 627), this standard
label was offered as a first response by only 75 (22%) of the
339 NMCOSS consultants who were asked to identify a
picture of this insect. We see on the map that abeja is scat-
tered around the region but clusters a bit more densely in
the Border Spanish areas. Another 19 NMCOSS consul-
tants (6%), randomly dispersed and therefore not presented
on the map, responded with obeja, as did about 10 of the
ALM interviewees (though spelled oveja in that project).
This distortion of abeja may be related to the fact that the
homophonous oveja for ‘Ewe’ occurs rarely and only as a
learned word, as previously pointed out regarding map 11-1.
In New Mexican Spanish, however, the distortion may also
reflect a blending with the most widely used label, ovispa.
A bare majority of our NMCOSS respondents offered
either ovispa (107 cases, 32%) or avispa (68 cases, 20%) for
‘Honeybee.’ The latter is the standard term for the other
stinging insect, ‘Wasp.’ In addition, there are 13 cases of
vispa. This last variant no doubt represents a reduction of
avispa attributable to utterances where the initial /a/ is not
perceptible when accompanied by a singular feminine arti-
cle. That is, employing hyphens to represent syllable divi-
sion, una avispa ‘a wasp’ is phonetically [u-na-ßis-pa] and
la avispa ‘the wasp’ is phonetically [la-ßis-pa]. This kind of
reanalysis in language acquisition by children is a common
phenomenon in language change; for example, that’s how
Mexicanisms
a napron became an apron in English. Relatedly, a sixty-
four-year-old consultant from Rinconada, New Mexico
(interview 198), thought the standard word for ‘Mud’ was
odo, no doubt because of the merger of the two l’s in el lodo,
phonetically [elódo] ‘the mud.’ Map 11-7 shows that the 81
cases of avispa and vispa combined are distributed loosely
without any identifiable regional patterning. The other
form—ovispa, however, displays definite regional pattern-
ing. Map 11-7 indicates that it is typical of the Traditional
Spanish area. This label seems obviously to be derived from
the avispa form, but we are unwilling to even speculate on
the motivation for the change of /a/ to /o/.
In the Mexico atlas, avispa for ‘Honeybee’ was men-
tioned only 2 times, and ovispa (spelled obispa) and vispa
(spelled bispa) had only 1 mention each, none of these
occurring in northern Mexico. The prominence in New
Mexican Spanish of the wasp-like labels (avispa, ovispa, and
vispa), then, seems to be something special to this dialect.
A final complication to the ‘Honeybee’ picture: in the
ALM the strongest minority form after abeja is colmena,
which surfaced mostly in central Mexico. This word,
which is more commonly (two-thirds of the time) real-
ized as cormena in the NMCOSS, was preferred by just
46 (14%) of our consultants. Map 11-7 shows that these
persons are scattered here and there across the region but,
like those who preferred abeja, they appear dispropor-
tionately in the Border Spanish areas.
It is of interest to note the nonstandard words cited
for ‘bee’ or ‘honeybee’ in regional dictionaries for the
Southwest. For example, Galván and Teschner (1975,
1977), Cobos (1983, 2003) and L. Trujillo (1983) all include
avispa with this meaning. Only the three New Mexican
Spanish dictionaries, however, mention the ovispa vari-
ant (spelled obispa in L. Trujillo and entered under both
spellings in Cobos). On the other hand, only the Galván
and Teschner dictionaries include colmena, and none of
the four lists cormena. That is, of the 3 major nonstandard
variants for ‘Honeybee,’ avispa is the most general while
ovispa characterizes Traditional Spanish and colmena/
cormena Border Spanish.
Now let’s take a look at map 11-8 and the words for
‘Wasp’ in the NMCOSS area. In this case, the standard
avispa is the strongest response. Nonetheless, it was
offered by fewer than half of the 330 respondents (135
persons, 41%), while in Mexico it is the overwhelmingly
preferred form (mapa 636). However, 22% of the consul-
tants we queried were unable to provide a label (56 cases)
or could give only an English word (17 cases), so in fact a
majority (53%) of those who offered some Spanish word
reported the standard avispa.
201
 11-7. ‘Honeybee’

202 chapter eleven

 11-8. ‘Wasp’

Mexicanisms 203
 Another 78 NMCOSS consultants (24%) gave the
related ‘Wasp’ variant ovispa, which is also listed with this
meaning under the spelling obispa in Cobos’s diction-
ary (2003) but it does not appear in L. Trujillo’s diction-
ary. The only other NMCOSS responses that might merit
mention here are 10 cases of abeja, 10 of cormena, 4 of
vispa, and 3 of obeja, which only further demonstrate the
lexical havoc in New Mexican Spanish regarding these
2 stinging insects that fly. The ALM reports some very
minor variation, but hardly havoc, in this respect: 5 abeja,
3 obispa, and 2 colmena.
A striking development, then, is the prominence of
the innovative form ovispa in the NMCOSS results—31%
of ‘Honeybee’ responses and 24% of ‘Wasp’ responses.
Equally striking is that the 2 related forms avispa and
ovispa combine to form the majority response for
‘Honeybee’ (51%) as well as for ‘Wasp’ (65%). We must
point out, however, that the data collected by Alvar
(2000, 277–78) and analyzed by Pedrero (2002, 316–17)
show a very different situation. First, they report not a
single instance of ovispa (though oddly enough, Alvar
cites ovispa for ‘Wasp’ in his index of words). Second,
the crossovers they find do seem limited to informants
in the NMCOSS region, but they document just 3 cases
of avispa for ‘Honeybee’ (only 11%) and a whopping 4 of
abeja for ‘Wasp’ (15%). Our own results are so robust that
we must assume the discrepancy results from their small
sample size.
The NMCOSS findings indicate that some speakers
of New Mexican Spanish fail to make a clear distinction
between the 2 things we label in English as wasp and bee.
As a matter of fact, nearly a third (31%) of the NMCOSS
respondents manifested lexical merger. Fifty-two consul-
tants labeled both insects with ovispa, 40 with avispa, 3
with abeja, 3 with cormena, 2 with vispa, 1 with huispa,
and 1 with obeja. In contrast, only 49 persons opted for
the standard solution, to differentiate the 2 insects with
abeja for ‘Honeybee’ and avispa for ‘Wasp.’
Map 11-9 illustrates the three highlights for the
‘Honeybee’/‘Wasp’ merger versus standard differentia-
tion. The merger employing ovispa is typical of the heart-
land of Traditional Spanish. The merger employing avispa
is more closely associated with Border Spanish. The
prescriptive differentiation using abeja for ‘Honeybee’
and avispa for ‘Wasp’ is still more strongly represented in
the Border Spanish areas but also occurs scattered around
the Traditional Spanish area. We were surprised to find
that the standard differentiation responses display only
modest associations with such social variables as age,
formal study of Spanish, and education in general.
204
We see, then, that New Mexican Spanish differs
sharply from modern Mexican Spanish in words for
the 2 stinging insects. While most speakers of Mexican
Spanish use the standard labels to distinguish ‘Honeybee’
and ‘Wasp,’ few speakers of New Mexican Spanish do so.
The development of ovispa from avispa may have devel-
oped in Mexican Spanish (and beyond: Moreno de Alba
1992a, 188, reports this use in the Canary Islands), but it
has flourished in New Mexican Spanish. The use of the
‘Wasp’ forms avispa and ovispa for ‘Honeybee’ also shows
up slightly in Mexico but has mushroomed to majority
status in the NMCOSS region. Finally, the use of the same
term for both insects, the lexical merger, appears to be a
unique development of New Mexican Spanish.
Patterns of Migration
Perhaps the most intriguing Mexican–New Mexican
comparison cases are those where a variant displays
restricted geographical distribution in both Mexico and
the NMCOSS area. We note in chapter 4 (in connection
with maps 4-5, 4-6, and 4-7) that the NMCOSS occur-
rences of cócono and güíjalo are associated with the
distributions of those forms in north-central and western
Mexico, respectively. It is possible that a specific distri-
bution in our region is a consequence of immigration
from the part of Mexico that currently displays the same
linguistic behavior or perhaps previously manifested the
phenomenon. It is also possible that the NMCOSS distri-
bution is due simply to the closeness of contact with that
part of Mexico.
Another variant that shows ALM and NMCOSS
distributions similar to those of cócono is one of the labels
for ‘Mosquito.’ As we report in chapter 6, the form moyote
occurs almost exclusively in the states of Chihuahua
and Durango, according to the ALM. In the NMCOSS,
we find the occurrences of moyote clustered in the most
southern reaches of New Mexico adjacent to Chihuahua
(see maps 6-6 and 6-7). This result no doubt reflects both
the immigration pattern and continuing close contact.
But moyote remains very much a minority form both
north and south of the border, representing only about
18% of the responses in the NMCOSS and a paltry 4% in
the ALM.
We mentioned a more complex set of New Mexican–
Mexican relationships in chapter 7 regarding the variable
‘Shoelace.’ Cinta is the dominant form across northern
Mexico and, like cócono and moyote, that label charac-
terizes Border Spanish (see map 7-13). In contrast, the
term preferred in Traditional Spanish is the Nahuatlism
chapter eleven
 11-9. ‘Honeybee,’ ‘Wasp’

Mexicanisms 205
 11-10. ‘Ankle’ in Mexico
mecate, which occurs in Mexico in only a handful of cases
in the state of Sonora. But more common in Sonora and
the northwest generally is the term cordón, which shows
up in central New Mexico with a western slant reminis-
cent of the güíjalo connection with Sonora. However, in
comparison to mecate, the numbers for cordón are much
larger in both speech areas and therefore make a stronger
case for the relationship between western New Mexican
Spanish and northwestern Mexico.
Making the ‘Shoelace’ case more interesting still, the
heavily favored Mexican term agujeta appears to have
spread as a prestigious variant from central Mexico where
it is overpoweringly dominant, relegating all 3 of the previ-
ously mentioned forms to peripheral areas: cinta princi-
pally in the north, cordón in the northwest and southeast,
and mecate barely alive in Sonora—and all 3 in the even
more peripheral New Mexican Spanish region. Only 1 of
the NMCOSS consultants offered the agujeta form, but we
can be confident that New Mexican Spanish will soon feel
the impact of this import from Chilangolandia (chilango
is a popular nickname of unknown origin for a person
from Mexico City).
206
The variable ‘Ankle’ displays yet another transborder
pattern. Map 11-10 shows the general distribution of two
forms for ‘Ankle’ in Mexico; this is a synthesized version
of the very detailed mapa 755 in the ALM. Although a
large number of variants show up across the Mexican
landscape, the standard term tobillo is heavily domi-
nant everywhere. Among the colloquial expressions,
hueso sabroso ‘tasty bone’ and huesito sabroso ‘tasty little
bone’ are especially captivating and particularly rele-
vant for our comparisons. As you can see on the map,
those sabroso terms (like the moyote label for ‘Mosquito’)
occur exclusively in the central north of Mexico (states of
Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Coahuila, and Nuevo
León), which perhaps accounts for the fact that neither
term is mentioned by Santamaría (1959). And too, they are
not very common. We count just 39 mentions, represent-
ing only perhaps 6% of the ALM informants.
But in the NMCOSS, 61 persons preferred huesito
sabroso and 21 preferred hueso sabroso. Cobos (2003)
lists only the former and L. Trujillo (1983) only the latter,
but Alvar (2000, 196) reports both and shows them to be
the dominant term across our region. These 2 variants
chapter eleven
together represent 26% of the 318 NMCOSS responses for
this item, an especially significant proportion consid-
ering that nearly a third (32%) offered only the English
label or no response at all. The 2 variants have nondis-
tinct geographical distributions so we have combined
them for display on map 11-11. Their distribution differs
greatly from the distribution of moyote shown on map
6-6. The hues(it)o sabroso designation is not just typical
in the south but rather is widespread across New Mexico
and southern Colorado.
The present distribution in New Mexican Spanish
cannot be the result of either recent immigration or close
communicative contact with Mexico. Rather, the breadth
and prominence of its occurrence suggests that it has
been around a long time. We surmise that this colloquial
label must have once been more widespread in Mexico
and that the pressure of the standard tobillo has eroded
its position there. Note that the standard variant tobillo
is also scattered across the NMCOSS region. However,
it accounts for just 16% of the responses and is largely
limited to the areas characterized by twentieth-century
immigration from Mexico. As we will see later in chapter
14, it is also clearly associated with education and formal
study of Spanish.
Note also that a significant minority of NMCOSS
consultants (27 persons or 8%) distributed across the
rural north opted for the term zancarrón for ‘Ankle.’ The
number of responses and their restricted distribution
suggest that this label may represent another indepen-
dent development, with zancarrón apparently undergoing
a shift in meaning from ‘leg bone’ to ‘Ankle.’ Zancarrón
is not, however, documented in the ALM for ‘Ankle.’
Therefore, its occurrence in our survey may be the result
of confusion in body-part terms. After all, 17 consultants
chose the term canilla, the New Mexican Spanish word for
‘shin’ (Cobos 2003), and another 11 chose talón, the label
for ‘Heel’ preferred by 85% of our consultants. Moreover,
83 of our consultants offered no word for ‘Ankle’ and
another 19 responded with the English ankle, revealing a
major lexical gap for speakers of New Mexican Spanish.
Yet another transborder comparison pattern is seen
in the variable ‘Temple’ (of the head). Map 11-12 displays
the 3 major variants for this variable: sien (125 responses,
38%), sentido (63 responses, 21%, pronounced sintido in 7 of
these responses), and templo (49 responses, 15%). The most
interesting variant for our comparative purpose is sentido,
which has a restricted distribution in the NMCOSS results.
It occurs primarily in rural communities of the north-
ernmost Traditional Spanish territory. Surprisingly, it is
not listed in the dictionary of L. Trujillo (1983), and this
Mexicanisms
meaning of sentido was absent in Cobos 1983 but was added
in the 2003 version. According to Pedrero (2002, 14), of the
12 cases of sentido encountered in the Alvar sample of five
southwestern states, 10 are in the NMCOSS region, with 1
case each in Arizona and Texas; and confirming our find-
ings, Alvar (2000, 186) shows those NMCOSS cases occur-
ring only in the rural north. Similarly, 3 of the 4 persons
Lope Blanch interviewed in the rural northern town of
Mora identified ‘Temple’ as sentido (1990a, 82).
Map 11-13, which is our adaptation of the ALM mapa
711, reveals that this same form sentido has a distribution
in Mexico very different from that of hues(it)o sabroso
and moyote. It occurs not in the central north, but in the
south (states of Guerrero, Morelos, Puebla, Veracruz,
Oaxaca, and Chiapas) and along the west coast (states
of Sonora, Sinaloa, Baja California, and Baja California
Sur). That is, it occurs only in outlying areas far removed
from the long-standing centers of Mexican power and
communication. Far removed just as New Mexico has
been. In Colombia, too, sentido appears strongly, but on
the peripheries, in the north and in the far south (ALEC
vol. 5, mapa 7). These distributions suggest that in both
Mexico and the NMCOSS area, as well as in Colombia,
the standard form sien has been gradually replacing the
formerly much more widespread sentido, relegating it to
peripheral areas. That is, sentido may be another case of
retention, an archaism.
Returning to map 11-12 for New Mexican Spanish,
note the distribution of the standard term sien (which is
also not listed in either Cobos or L. Trujillo (1983), again,
presumably because it is considered standard). It is partic-
ularly characteristic of the Border Spanish areas but has
penetrated deeply into the Traditional Spanish region.
We may assume that sentido was at one time more widely
used but as in Mexico, it seems to now be losing sway to
the encroachment of the standard (but see the further
discussion in the next chapter concerning table 12-7).
Incidentally, a fifty-five-year-old female from San
Mateo, New Mexico (interview 143), found her prefer-
ence sien to be quite funny, apparently associating it with
the homophonous word cien ‘hundred.’ Why should we
call this part of the head ‘hundred’? In one of the earliest
dialect geography studies anywhere, Gilliéron found that
by regular phonological change gat in southwest France
came to be the word for both ‘cat’ and ‘rooster’ and that
this homonymic clash resulted in the development of a
new word for rooster (Gilliéron and Roques 1912). The
clash in using the same word for ‘Temple’ and ‘hundred’
may occasionally produce a chuckle but in no way is it
retarding the spread of sien.
207
 11-11. ‘Ankle’

208 chapter eleven

 11-12. ‘Temple’

Mexicanisms 209
 11-13. ‘Temple’ in Mexico
Sentido is also threatened by the appearance of the
English loanword templo (once more listed in neither
Cobos nor L. Trujillo), which occurs patchily around our
survey area. Not included on map 11-12 are 4 instances of
the differently integrated temple and 18 cases of nonin-
tegrated temple. If those numbers are added to the 49
cases of templo, the proportion rises to 22%. Interestingly
enough, templo accounts for 20% of the appropriate
responses for ‘Temple’ in Domínguez’s study (1983) of Los
Angeles, occurring primarily in the third generation and
absent in the immigrant generation (and sentido did not
occur at all in that study).
In sum, then, in Mexico the sentido label faces only
1 powerful opponent: the standard sien. In New Mexico
and southern Colorado, it faces 2 powerful opponents.
The twin forces of Anglicism and standard Spanish are
rapidly undermining the vitality of sentido. How long
can this special feature of Traditional Spanish hang on?
We should also note here, without going into detail, that
yet another ‘Mosquito’ variant, mosco, has NMCOSS and
ALM distributions quite similar to sentido (see again
maps 6-6 and 6-7).
210
Sometimes the NMCOSS-ALM comparison reveals
two connective strands independent of the influence of
standard Spanish. The words for ‘Cornsilk,’ the hair-like
strands on a fresh ear of corn, provide a good example.
The 3 principal variants we encountered for New Mexican
Spanish are cabello (including cabellito, 164 preferences,
52%), barba (including barbas, 61 preferences, 19%), and
pelo (including pelito and pelitos, 31 preferences, 10%).
Since the pelo responses are randomly scattered across the
region, they are not included in map 11-14. This map, like
so many others we’ve seen, shows clearly that the barba
forms characterize Border Spanish while the cabello
forms characterize Traditional Spanish. (The ‘Cornsilk’
meaning derives from the more basic meanings of these
words. Cabello and pelo are equivalent terms in New
Mexican Spanish for ‘Hair’ of a human. The basic mean-
ing of barba is ‘beard.’)
The same 3 forms also represent the major players in
Mexico, according to the ALM mapa 832. Each form has
a coherent geographical distribution there. Our synthesis
map 11-15 represents a simplification of the Mexican facts.
In reality, there is considerable overlap of variants across the
chapter eleven
 11-14. ‘Cornsilk’

Mexicanisms 211
 11-15. ‘Cornsilk’ in Mexico
isoglosses (boundary lines) that we have drawn, but the vari-
ant specified for each area is the majority form within that
area. The use of pelo for ‘Cornsilk,’ for example, is particu-
larly prominent in northeastern Mexico as well as in south-
ern Mexico. Since this term corresponds to no patterning in
the NMCOSS region, we discuss it no further.
The barba forms, however, are dominant in the
northwest of Mexico—in the state of Chihuahua and
south along the western coast through the state of Sinaloa.
This distribution ties in keenly with the NMCOSS asso-
ciation of barba with Border Spanish. The presence of this
label in New Mexican Spanish today is almost certainly
attributable to immigration from northern Mexico in the
twentieth century.
The cabello forms, on the other hand, represent
the dominant variant throughout central and southern
Mexico except for the most southern state of Chiapas
and most of Oaxaca. Its distributions in Mexican and
New Mexican Spanish indicate that it is a long-standing
retention. Cabello for ‘Cornsilk’ happens to be the widely
212
used standard term, but it is unlikely that the distribu-
tion of the label for this homespun reference has come
about in the top-down dissemination by which standard
language words are usually spread, that is, via education
and the media.
By way of conclusion, we may note three findings in
this exploration of transborder dialect geography. First,
New Mexican Spanish is demonstrably an extension of
Mexican Spanish. Second, the many divergences between
Mexican and New Mexican Spanish reflect a long history
of less than quick-and-easy communicative interaction.
And third, both New Mexico and Mexico are regions of
dynamic language change. As we’ve demonstrated in previ-
ous reports, education (Bills and Vigil 1999b), immigration
(Bills and Vigil 1999c, Vigil and Bills 2000a, 2000b), and
the English language (Bills and Vigil 1999a, Vigil and Bills
1999) are the major contributors to the vibrant linguistic
situation involving the Spanish language in New Mexico
and southern Colorado. Part 4 explores the implications of
those vibrations for the future.
chapter eleven
Part IV

The Present
and Future of
New Mexican Spanish
 Chap ter 12
The Permanent Certainty
Intergenerational Change
• It is often observed, but much less often attributed
to Heracleitus, that the only thing that is perma-
nent is change. Every characteristic of human culture
and society changes over time, and that is particularly
true for that peculiarly human characteristic, language.
All languages and all varieties of a language change over
time. This observation holds for living languages, of
course. Latin may remain pretty much as it was 2,000
years ago, but it is a lifeless relic like the Roman Coliseum
or the Appian Way.
Language change may be slow, but it is inexorable.
Any English speaker who tries to read Shakespeare (not
to mention Chaucer) knows that English has changed
greatly over 500 years (or 1,000 years, or especially the
1,500 years since the Germanic invaders of the British Isles
gave birth to English). The same is true for the Spanish
speaker who tries to read the twelfth-century Cantar de
mio Cid in our earliest copy from the fourteenth century
(Marcos Marín 1997). And those are examples of the writ-
ten language, which in many respects may lag centuries
behind changes in the spoken language. Speakers of both
languages would have much greater difficulty under-
standing the spoken language of those earlier eras.
Substantial changes occur in every aspect of the
structure of a language over a few centuries. But change
in the words we prefer can occur even more quickly, from
one generation to the next. Such change in progress can
be perceived in the behavior of a large group of people
representing several generations, such as the NMCOSS
consultants. Differences between older persons and
younger persons in their lexical choices may reveal the
direction of linguistic change. The NMCOSS consul-
tants range in age from fifteen to ninety-six, represent-
ing a time span of eight decades, which can easily be
construed to represent three generations. If we divide
the consultants into three age groups, we can consider
those groups to represent three generations. Any consis-
tent trends across these generations, then, may be consid-
ered probable directions of language change over time,
with the younger speakers representing the direction of
change in the future.
To illustrate the procedure let us return to the words
for ‘Turkey’ dealt with in chapter 4. In this case, however,
the data collected by Lawrence Kiddle (1951–52) allow us
to posit a fourth generation, a great-grandparent genera-
tion. The oldest NMCOSS age group—those age sixty-five
215
 Table 12-1. Responses for ‘Turkey’ by four Generations (percentages)
Younger Middle Older Predecessors
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96 (Kiddle)
gallina de la tierra/sierra 0.0 0.7 5.6 27.4
ganso 25.6 19.3 30.6 17.1
guajolote 9.8 10.4 10.5 4.3
guajalote 6.1 2.2 1.6 0.0
cócono 15.9 13.3 15.3 9.1
cócano 3.7 14.8 11.3 18.3
güíjalo 0.0 0.7 4.0 4.3
torque/terque/turkey 25.6 30.4 15.3 11.6
pavo/pavón 11.0 7.4 5.6 7.9
N 82 135 124 164

or more in the 1990s—would have been teenagers or young
adults at the time of Kiddle’s survey in the 1930s. Although
Kiddle provides no specific information on the age of his
consultants, we may assume that they averaged forty or
fifty years of age, thus representing one generation older
than our oldest group of subjects. We have divided our
consultants into generational groups as follows: those age
forty or younger, which we will call the Younger genera-
tion, those of ages forty-one to sixty-four, which we’ll call
the Middle generation, and those sixty-five years old or
older, which we’ll call the Older generation. Kiddle’s group
we’ll call the Predecessors. The four generations are given
across the top of table 12-1.
What has taken place over the century or so repre-
sented by these four generations? Note first the remark-
able abandonment of the gallina forms, from a 27%
approval in the Predecessors generation, to 6% in the
Older generation, to only one case in the Middle gener-
ation, and finally to none at all in the Younger genera-
tion. A distinguishing characteristic of Traditional New
Mexican Spanish, gallina de la tierra, appears to be lost.
Kiddle’s gallina de la sierra is long gone, completely
rejected by the three NMCOSS generations.
Another uniquely New Mexican form, however,
is holding its own quite well. Our youngest generation
displays a slightly higher percentage of use of ganso than
those in Kiddle’s survey. This form was once used across
our landscape but has now retreated to the northeast
quadrant of the state, as was shown in map 4-2. What
might the future hold for the fate of ganso? It’s hard to
predict. On one hand, those who favor it have formed
a more dense community, but on the other hand, its
range of users has diminished greatly. In addition, it is
in competition with the standard meaning of the same
form throughout New Mexico. The forces of change seem
aligned against this Traditional Spanish form, too.
The two variants, guajolote and guajalote, of the
first Nahuatl loanword given in table 12-1, are maintain-
ing good support. Each is used more commonly in the
Younger generation than in Kiddle’s time. However, the
two seem to be moving in opposite directions. Whither?
While the use of guajolote is stable, the use of guajalote is
increasing. Nevertheless, guajolote’s influence has spread
beyond the south since Kiddle’s time and we can expect
further expansion as Mexican immigration increases.
The cócono/cócano pair also show opposing trends,
but in this case it is the /o/ form that shows a steady
strength across the generations, culminating in a
substantial 16% among the youngest speakers. On the
other hand, the use of cócano, although previously strong
across three generations, collapses in the Younger genera-
tion to just 4%. Though cócono and cócano were and still
are employed across the state, they rarely occur east of
the Río Grande in the northern part of the state, that is,
in ganso territory. But like guajolote, cócono is nurtured
by immigration from Mexico, particularly from the state
of Chihuahua, and we expect it will be maintained and
likely strengthened for years to come.

216 chapter twelve

 The final Nahuatl borrowing, güíjolo/güíjalo appears
to have been brought into New Mexico by immigrants
from the west coast of Mexico. That current, however,
seems never to have been very strong, and the foothold of
this form in the state has been too weak to be sustained.
The generational trajectory is consistently downward,
starting from only 4.3% and falling to zero. It is no longer
an indicator of the Border Spanish dialect and, like gallina
de la tierra, is definitely in the throes of agony.
We come now to the “800-pound gorilla” in the
turkey wars, the Anglicism. While torque (together with
the rare terque and turkey) was already well established
as a minority variant in the 1930s, it almost tripled in use
over the next two generations. In the youngest two gener-
ations, only ganso and cócono/cocano are competitive in
the numbers game. Especially remarkable is the fact that
torque has become dominant largely in the Traditional
Spanish area, hardly penetrating the strongholds of
Mexican immigration in the south (see map 4-3). We can
expect the Anglicism and the two strongest Nahuatlisms
to continue to gain ground and be the major competitors
in the future. It will be interesting to see how this exercise
in linguistic democracy plays out.
Yet we must be aware that another dark-horse
competitor exists, the standard form pavo. Pavo actually
made a pretty decent showing in Kiddle’s survey (8%),
presumably attributable in part to that generation’s having
been raised in pre-statehood New Mexico with a predom-
inantly Spanish system of schooling and exposure to the
written language. Nevertheless, across the three genera-
tions of the NMCOSS consultants, there is a consistent
increase in pavo use, reaching 11% among the Younger age
group. We can fully expect that trend to continue with
an increase in the number of Hispanics receiving higher
levels of education and formally studying Spanish.
Nevertheless, standardization is not the most potent
force in language change. There are many nonstandard
forms that—like cócono, ganso, and torque—seem to be
expanding significantly. For example, only 12% of the
Older generation offered the slang term chota as their
first choice to label a ‘Policeman,’ but 35% of the young-
est age group did so. We must keep in mind, however,
that differences across generations do not always indicate
actual language change in progress. This finding for use of
chota, for instance, may very well indicate that individuals
change their language behavior over time. That is, these
Younger persons may simply be more prone to use slang
now but may show a preference for the less slangy polecía
or policía as they get older, at least in a more formal task
such as identifying pictures in a tape-recorded interview.
The Permanent Certainty
In fact, Older speakers seemed equally likely to use the
slang term in conversational speech, as illustrated in the
following comments by two quite mature women, ages
eighty-five and ninety-six, respectively:
(12-1) Vinieron los chotas y sale su mujer de él y les
dijo que no lo aventó. ‘The cops came and his
wife came out and told them that she had not
run him off.’ (interview 313)
(12-2) Ya se pierden los hombres y no los jallan ni
vivos ni muertos porque los chotas no hacen
nada. ‘Men get lost and you don’t find them
either dead or alive because the cops don’t do
anything.’ (interview 219)
Thus, it is not always certain that cross-generation differ-
ences reflect language change in progress.
Clear indications of change toward nonstandard
features are apparent in grammatical forms of the verb
haber ‘have.’ The use of the first person plural present
tense hamos instead of standard hemos—in no lo hamos
visto ‘we haven’t seen him’—is preferred by only a quar-
ter (25%) of the Older group but 40% of the Younger
group. And the first person singular form ha (versus
standard he) that is identical to the third person singu-
lar form—no lo ha visto ‘I haven’t seen him’ or ‘she hasn’t
seen him’—rises from just 32% of the oldest generation
to 63% of the youngest generation. It is likely that “regu-
larization” or “simplification” plays a role in the develop-
ment of these nonstandard forms since the other present
tense forms all have the vowel a: has ‘you have,’ ha ‘she
has,’ and han ‘they have.’ In the case of ha for ‘I have,’
however, the change may also reflect the strong universal
tendency toward expansion of third person forms found
in research on grammaticalization theory (e.g., Bybee and
Brewer 1980).
As another example of the expansion of nonstandard
forms, the noun clima ‘Weather’ is often regularized to
feminine gender (e.g. la clima versus standard el clima)
to accord with the fact that the vast majority of Spanish
nouns that end in a are feminine. Across the generations,
the nonstandard variant increases from 45% of the Older
age group to 65% of Younger age group.
Decline of Traditional Spanish
The preceding generational analysis of the words for
‘Turkey’ currently in use in New Mexican Spanish suggests
a central trend in the ongoing changes: the features in
decline across the generations are frequently those that
217
 Table 12-2. Decline of Traditional Spanish forms across Generations (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
comal ‘Skillet’ 0.0 1.5 11.0
ánsara ‘Goose’ 2.4 9.6 22.6
pariagüe, paragüe ‘Umbrella’ 6.3 50.0 57.4
camalta ‘Bed’ 6.5 10.1 20.4
horno ‘Skillet’ 7.6 15.6 16.1
cuerpo ‘Blouse’ 15.4 23.1 34.5
chupilote ‘Buzzard’ 15.9 21.6 36.6
mora ‘Strawberry’ 16.0 32.8 33.6
almendras ‘Nuts’ (in general) 16.0 31.9 38.5
ratón volador ‘Bat’ 18.1 51.9 68.5
tresquilar ‘Shear’ 19.0 37.3 55.3
paisano ‘Roadrunner’ 19.3 45.5 58.9
chile/chilito de perro ‘Sty’ 26.3 50.4 59.8
bolita ‘Marble’ 41.3 65.9 63.0
cuerpoespín/corpoespín ‘Porcupine’ 27.8 53.7 63.6
metate ‘Grinding stone’ 43.2 53.5 77.2
petaquilla ‘Trunk’ 45.0 82.1 79.5
tútano ‘Marrow’ 45.2 81.1 83.4
pescuezo ‘Neck’ 46.8 59.4 67.8
chuparrosa ‘Hummingbird’ 47.6 66.7 72.8

are particularly characteristic of Traditional Spanish as
indicated by their distributions on maps. That is, there is a
tendency to lose those features of the Traditional Spanish
dialect that embody its uniqueness.
Ganso for ‘Turkey,’ of course, is an exception to the
trend. And there are other exceptions. Thus, while the
preferred term for a woman’s ‘Dress’ (map 5-3) is the distinc-
tive túnico for half (50%) of the Older generation, it remains
preferred by almost half (46%) of the Younger generation.
The use of arrear for ‘Drive (an automobile)’ (map 8-9) actu-
ally shows an increase, from a third (33%) of the Older group
to nearly half (44%) of the Younger group. The preference
for the French loanword puela to label a ‘Skillet’ (map 9-4)
increases from 40% among the oldest group to 51% among
the youngest group. The use of maleta for ‘Purse,’ in the
face of its standard meaning ‘Suitcase,’ increases from 24%
of the Older generation to 30% of the Younger generation
(see map 16-15). Regarding the term for ‘Smoke’ (map 5-11),
the archaic pronunciation of the h in humo as [xúmo]—
which we represent in dialect orthography as jumo—shows
an increase from 23% of the Older age group to 38% of the
Younger age group.
Nevertheless, in most cases, it is the typically
Traditional Spanish form that is found to be in decline.
Table 12-2 provides a sampling of other variables that
illustrate the pervasiveness of the intergenerational loss
of forms unique to or characteristic of Traditional New
Mexican Spanish. We see, for example, that comal for
‘Skillet,’ which was only a minority variant at 11% in the
Older generation, disappears entirely by the third genera-
tion. At the opposite extreme, tútano for ‘Marrow’ was
favored by 83% of the oldest group but falls to just a 45%
preference in the youngest group.
These distinctive features are being replaced under
the pressure of two forces: English on one side, and
Mexican Spanish and Standard Spanish on the other. In
the following sections we provide more detailed exem-
plification of these influences on generational change
in the maintenance of New Mexican Spanish and of the
Traditional Spanish dialect in particular.

218 chapter twelve

 Table 12-3. Responses for ‘Dime’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
diez centavos, un diez 7.7 18.0 55.7
daime 84.6 81.2 42.6
Other response 7.7 0.8 1.7
N 78 133 115

Table 12-4. Responses for ‘Bat’ by Generation (percentages)

Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
ratón volador 18.1 51.9 68.8
murciélago, murciégalo, and variants 27.7 17.0 22.4
bat 21.7 17.8 0.8
bate 7.2 2.2 0.8
Other response 3.6 3.0 1.6
No response 21.7 8.1 5.6
N 83 135 125

English Influence
Map 12-1 shows the geographical distribution of one of
the more region-wide borrowings from English, the use of
daime for the ten-cent U.S. coin ‘Dime.’ A full 68% of the
326 respondents (223 persons) made this Anglicism their
first choice, and it predominates in every corner of the
NMCOSS territory. Armistead (1992, 265) also reports the
use of this form in the Isleño Spanish of Louisiana, and it
is prominent in other varieties of U.S. Spanish. Another
9 responses based on English (dime, dima, dime) are not
displayed on the map. A significant minority of speak-
ers offered a response that included the Spanish word for
‘ten.’ This was usually diez centavos (73 preferences, 22%),
which is also represented on map 12-1, but there were also
a couple of minor variants such as un diez. As you can
appreciate from the map, neither daime nor diez centavos
displays any regional patterning.
An analysis of the occurrence of this form by gener-
ation illustrates how rapidly and thoroughly such an
Anglicism can replace a native designation. Table 12-3
shows the first responses in labeling this coin provided by
the survey consultants. While the majority of the oldest
generation responded with a fully acceptable Spanish
form using diez, an overwhelming 85% of the Younger
generation offered the form daime (and 6 of the 7 other
responses by this young group were some variant of the
English word).
Daime is replacing expressions that are of general
currency in Spanish, acceptable anywhere. The data for
the variable ‘Bat’ presented in table 12-4, however, tell a
different story. In this case, the Anglicism realized as unas-
similated bat and integrated bate is replacing not a general
Spanish form, but a highly marked Traditional Spanish
form, ratón volador. As we noted in chapter 8 in connec-
tion with map 8-11, ratón volador is a compound lexical
item having the literal meaning ‘flying mouse.’ The equiva-
lent descriptive phrase is also the word for ‘bat’ in German
(die Fledermaus, like the opera by Johann Strauss) and
other languages. Moreover, the standard Spanish murcié-
lago itself derives from the compound, descriptive phrase
meaning ‘blind mouse.’ Nevertheless, no amount of this
kind of justification is going to make the ‘flying mouse’
term of Traditional Spanish be considered anything other
than foolishly quaint if not corrupt to speakers of Spanish
from other countries. Table 12-4 demonstrates that ratón
volador is rapidly being lost across time—in part as a
consequence of the external disdain. Its status falls from
nearly 70% preference in the Older generation to less than
20% in the Younger generation.

The Permanent Certainty 219

 12-1. ‘Dime’

220 chapter twelve

 Although the Mexican (and standard) Spanish lexi-
cal item murciélago contributes to some of this displace-
ment, it is the influence of English that most accounts for
the loss of the Traditional Spanish word. Only 2 persons
in the Older generation offered an Anglicism, but the bate
or bat forms were favored by 20% of the Middle genera-
tion and by 29% of the Younger. It is also significant for
the pattern of loss that nearly a fourth (22%) of the young-
est group was unable or unwilling to provide any label
whatsoever for this common animal; the picture was, of
course, readily recognized by all consultants and we can
feel certain that at least 9 out of 10 (or more likely, 99 out
of 100) would have identified the creature in an interview
focused on English vocabulary.
More intricate and interesting is the spatial and
generational distribution of the distinct forms of the vari-
able ‘Shorts’ (depicted in the stimulus picture specifically
as the boxer type of men’s underwear) The principal vari-
ants were 2 Spanish terms—calzoncillos (45 responses,
14%) and calzones (31 responses, 9%)—and some form of
the English label, which we discuss later. Two-thirds of the
NMCOSS respondents (219 of 327) used an Anglicism.
These 3 major variants for ‘Shorts’ are plotted on map
12-2. Can we perceive any geographical pattern here? Not
much. The Anglicism blankets the region and domi-
nates in almost every community. The standard Spanish
form calzoncillos, which overwhelmingly dominates in
Mexico according to ALM mapa 918, occurs here and
there without any particular geographical concentration.
Only the more “Mexican” variant calzones, which is typi-
cal of central Mexico and extends well up into the state
of Chihuahua, displays geographical patterning. In the
NMCOSS, it shows up almost exclusively in the Border
Spanish areas. However, Alvar (2000, 201) shows that
the cases of calzones he found in New Mexico—2 cases
according to Pedrero’s analysis (2002, 52–53)—occur in
the northern part of the state, and Lope Blanch (1990a,
96) reports 1 case for Mora.
In the discussion of ‘Socks’ in chapter 5 (map 5-5), we
noted that the term calzones arose as the upper half of a
man’s tights and over time came to refer sometimes to the
interior garment and sometimes to the exterior garment.
While calzones may often carry the underwear mean-
ing ‘Shorts’ in Border Spanish, in Traditional Spanish
it usually refers to the outer clothing ‘Pants’ (‘trousers’
perhaps to some). It is possible that this ambiguity result-
ing from dialect contact has favored adoption of a neutral
form, the Anglicism.
The Anglicism was in fact realized in 3 different ways
representing 3 degrees of phonological integration: shorts
The Permanent Certainty
(79 responses, 24% of the total), shortes (108 responses, 33%),
and chortes (32 responses, 10%). The use of shorts amounts
to a spontaneous borrowing of the English word with-
out any integration into Spanish. The partially integrated
shortes avoids the un-Spanish final consonant cluster, but
retains the palatal fricative sh of English. And chortes repre-
sents full integration of the Anglicism into Spanish.
Now, a kink in this integration analysis is the variable
pronunciation of ch in New Mexican Spanish. Teasing out
the relative degree of integration of shortes versus chortes
is not a simple task. Chortes would clearly be the most
integrated form in those Spanish dialects where ch is
never realized phonetically as the fricative [š]. But in New
Mexican Spanish, as in many other varieties of Spanish
in Spain and in the Americas, it is common to hear the
ch pronounced sometimes as affricate [č] and sometimes
as fricative [š] in native words such as chica and mucha-
cho. It may well be that some NMCOSS speakers who
uttered shortes actually had fully integrated chortes as
the representation in their minds. The goal of linguistics
is to understand not just people’s linguistic behavior but
also their linguistic knowledge—not just what they do
but also what they know. The limitation here, and indeed
throughout this book, is that our raw data lie solely on the
behavioral side. We have to accept shortes as the middle
stage of integration but recognize that some undetermin-
able cases must represent the third stage.
A generational analysis gives us sharper insight
into the process of the phonological adaptation of this
Anglicism, the process of making an English word into
a “real” Spanish word. Table 12-5 shows the responses
by the three generational groups for ‘Shorts.’ The 3
Anglicism variants together represent the preferred
label across the board, from 56% in the oldest generation
to 73% and 72% in the two younger generations. (Each
generation also offered 2 or 3 other English responses,
e.g., boxers, boxer shorts, BVDs; these are included
under Other response in table 12-5.) However, the English
word shorts, without any integration whatsoever to the
sound system of Spanish, declines as the preferred vari-
ant from 1 out of 3 in the Older group to just 1 out of 4
in the Middle group and to fewer than 1 out of 10 in the
Younger group. On the other hand, the preference for the
more phonologically Spanish shortes and chortes rises
from less than a quarter (23%) of the Older generation to
nearly two-thirds (63%) of the youngest age group. The
partially assimilated shortes has become well entrenched
while the fully integrated chortes has only begun to play
a significant role. It is nonetheless clear, however, that the
Anglicism is an addition to the New Mexican Spanish
221
 12-2. ‘Shorts’

222 chapter twelve

 Table 12-5. Responses for ‘Shorts’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
calzón, calzones 10.1 13.4 16.7
calzoncillos 10.1 5.2 14.9
shorts 8.9 25.4 33.3
shortes 49.4 39.6 14.0
chortes 13.9 8.2 8.8
Other response 7.6 8.2 10.5
No response 0.0 0.0 1.8
N 79 134 114

Table 12-6. Responses for ‘Panties’ by Generation (percentages)

Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
calzones, calzón, calzoncitos, calzonillos 19.2 23.9 21.6
pantaletas 5.1 4.5 15.3
calzoncillos 2.6 3.0 4.5
panties 17.9 23.9 25.2
pantes, pantis, pentis, pentes 41.0 23.1 18.0
bloomers, blumes, blumas 1.3 10.4 4.5
Other response 9.0 11.2 7.2
No response 3.8 0.0 3.6
N 78 134 111

lexicon that is becoming more and more integrated with
each generation.
The female version of the “unmentionables” in cloth-
ing yields similar findings though in a still murkier set
of data. Both ‘Shorts’ and ‘Panties’ resulted in almost 30
different variants each. But while for ‘Shorts’ there are
only 7 variants offered by 5 or more respondents, there
are 12 such common variants for ‘Panties.’
Here again, English influence dominates among
those options. Of the 323 responses for ‘Panties,’ nearly
half (158 preferences, 49%) are some form of the English
word panties, and another 6% (20 preferences) are variants
of bloomers. Of the preferences for a native Spanish word,
the 3 most common responses are calzones in several
forms (70 responses, 22%), pantaletas (27 responses, 8%),
and calzoncillos (11 responses, 3%). Several other native
Spanish forms were offered, totaling 27 cases, but the
majority of these are general terms such as ropa de abajo
‘underwear’ and pantalones ‘pants’ (and are included
under Other response in table 12-6).
The generational analysis presented in table 12-6
shows that the 3 native Spanish responses, first three
rows of the table, fail to achieve majority status in any
age group even when combined. Their proportion of the
responses barely rises above 40% among the Older group
and declines across the succeeding generations to just
27%. Only the calzones forms (and 58 of the 70 cases are
indeed the simple plural calzones) manage to maintain a
significant hold across the three generations.
With regard to the Anglicisms, the single most
common variant, with 74 preferences (23% of the re-
sponses), is the unassimilated panties, pronounced with
the English vowel /æ/ in the first syllable. Another 4 vari-
ants of the Anglicism, in order of frequency, are pantes
(58 cases), pantis (15), pentis (8), and pentes (2). Notice in
table 12-6 that there is a modest decline in the frequency

The Permanent Certainty 223

of the unadapted panties across the generations, coincid-
ing with a substantial increase in the integrated variants.
And once again, we may identify stages in the inte-
gration process by which the foreign word becomes a
“normal” Spanish word with no alien traces. The first step
is to replace the English /æ/ vowel in the first syllable with
a Spanish vowel, either /a/ or /e/, with /a/ being by far the
most common resolution, perhaps because of semantic
associations with native Spanish words such as pantal-
ones and pantaletas. This stage retains the alien /i/ in the
unstressed final syllable, which is a possible but nonethe-
less rare occurrence in Spanish, manifest in only a hand-
ful of words such as casi. In this partially assimilated
form there is a very slight intergenerational decrease in
frequency of occurrence. The final step is to change that
second syllable vowel to a more normal Spanish /e/, yield-
ing pantes (or rarely, pentes). To add a detail not made
explicit in table 12-6, the now fully Spanish pantes was
offered by only 9% of the Older generation, but 16% of
the Middle generation, and becomes, at 35%, the clearly
preferred form among the Younger generation.
The same intergenerational integration is revealed
in yet another English borrowing for ‘Panties.’ The now
archaic English form bloomers was presumably borrowed
by a still earlier generation and has become little favored
even by our oldest group. Nevertheless, we witness the
intriguing remnants of the assimilated blumes (blumas in
1 instance) in the second and third generations even as it
disappears. Some readers may be surprised to learn that
the Atlas lingüístico de México documents some 20 cases
of bloomers, adapted in several different ways, sprinkled
across the northern half of Mexico.
We see in map 12-3 that the calzones forms for
‘Panties’ are not just characteristic but dominant in the
Border Spanish areas—and in this case Alvar’s find-
ings agree (2000, 207). The varied forms borrowed from
English are a feature of Traditional Spanish, hardly
making an appearance in the Border Spanish areas.
Generational differences, then, must be interpreted
through a geographical filter. The 4 forms representing
stages of integration (pantes, pantis, pentis, pentes) are
combined for display on map 12-3. These integrated forms
appear primarily in the Traditional Spanish region, and
especially in its rural heartland north of Albuquerque,
which suggests that the loanword appeared first in this
area. On the other hand, the Border Spanish heartland—
the calzones area—has been breached by only a handful
of cases of the Anglicism. These cases represent primar-
ily the first stage of borrowing, panties, indicating a quite
recent introduction. Looking back at map 12-2 for ‘Shorts,’
224
we see that it is also only the first stage borrowing shorts
that has made much encroachment into the far south.
A further comparison with the responses for
‘Shorts’ is warranted. First, pantaletas, which is the
standard American Spanish term for ‘Panties’ and the
clearly preferred label in Mexico (mapa 919), is reserved
in the NMCOSS area for the female undergarment; only
1 person in our survey offered pantaletas for ‘Shorts’
(and nobody in the ALM survey did so). Second, in the
NMCOSS results, calzoncillos is favored for the man’s
underwear by a margin of 4 to 1 (45 calzoncillos for
‘Shorts’ versus 11 for ‘Panties’). Finally, calzones is favored
for woman’s underwear by better than a margin of 2 to
1 (71 calzones for ‘Panties’ versus 32 for ‘Shorts’); more-
over, 7 of the 32 for ‘Shorts’ were specified as calzones de
hombre. In Mexico, too, calzones responses were received
for both ‘Shorts’ and ‘Panties,’ but far more so for the
latter. In sum, the Anglicisms are taking over as labels
for both female and male “underpants” (as the garments
are often called in English). To the extent that native
Spanish labels are used, they tend to follow the practice
of modern Mexican Spanish.
The terms for ‘Temple (of the head)’ present an inter-
esting counterpoint in that the form being most strongly
displaced happens to be the standard variant. Table 12-7
lists the 3 major variants discussed in the preceding chap-
ter in connection with map 11-12: the sentido/sintido label
so characteristic of northern Traditional Spanish, the sien
of standard Spanish, and the integrated Anglicism templo.
In addition, we include here a minor variant representing
another English borrowing, the unassimilated temple.
Table 12-7 shows that the Traditional Spanish form
remains fairly stable across the generations, losing a little
ground in the third. But the sien variant crashes from 57%
among the Older group to just 10% among the Younger
group in spite of its status as both standard and Mexican
and being the numerically dominant form overall in New
Mexican Spanish (125 tokens versus just 68 for sentido/
sintido and 49 for templo).
In any case, it is the 2 Anglicisms, and particularly
the 1 that is integrated, that show an expansion in use over
time to make up for some of the loss of the native Spanish
terms. Similarly, in his Los Angeles study of mostly young
Hispanics representing three generations in the United
States, Domínguez (1983) found templo to displace sien as
the favored form in the third generation.
However, another phenomenon that increases sharply
across the generations is the inability or unwillingness to
provide any label at all. Fully one-third of our Younger
generation (and apparently 40% of Domínguez’s third
chapter twelve
 12-3. ‘Panties’

The Permanent Certainty 225

 Table 12-7. Responses for ‘Temple’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
sentido, sintido 15.2 23.1 22.0
sien 10.1 38.5 56.8
templo 27.8 15.4 5.9
temple 10.1 5.4 2.5
Other response 3.8 8.5 8.5
No response 32.9 9.2 4.2
N 79 130 118

Table 12-8. Responses for ‘Kite’ by Generation (percentages)

Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
papalote 38.0 50.0 78.6
kite 34.2 40.2 16.2
caite 5.1 6.1 0.9
Other response 8.9 1.5 1.7
No response 13.9 2.3 2.6
N 79 132 117

generation) provided no response. What does the future
promise? No doubt an English takeover in one form (the
Anglicism) or another (monolingualism in English).
It often seems that Anglicisms are most apt to creep
in across the generations where there exists linguistic
“dissension” within New Mexican Spanish, that is, where
2 or more other variants are already in competition. But
English influence can affect even the most unified and
homogeneous linguistic territory. Such is the case with the
‘Kite’ variable that we considered in chapter 7 (see map 7-7).
Table 12-8 demonstrates that the early Nahuatlism papalote
was the label of choice for 4 out of 5 of the Older age group.
The Anglicism kite had hardly intruded on the recre-
ational harmony of that generation. Two generations later,
however, the frequency of the Nahuatlism was cut in half
and the Anglicism kite along with its nascent integrated
form caite was running neck and neck with papalote.
The strength of the No response and Other response
for the Younger generation in table 12-8 signals another
factor that enters into the equation—the loss of skills in
Spanish, a topic to be treated in detail in the next chapter.
Nearly a fourth of the Younger group (23%) could offer
no appropriate response. The Other responses included
several apparent attempts at papalote (papolote, popote,
pelota—and Lope Blanch 1990a, 88, received a response
of tapalote in Mora); such distortions also reveal an attri-
tion of skill in the heritage language. The reluctance to
offer any response at all may well have been avoidance of
the so obviously un-Spanish kite. In fact, the integrated
borrowing caite is so marginally accessible that half of its
occurrences came about only in accepting a prompt from
the interviewer.
Map 7-7 for ‘Kite’ showed that the Anglicism was
not affecting papalote across the entire geographical
landscape. Like most of the preceding cases, its impact
occurs principally in the Traditional Spanish region. The
Nahuatlism holds on firmly in the Border Spanish strong-
holds. Moreover, it is the dominant form in Mexico. As
we will examine more closely in the following section,
linguistic features characteristic of Mexican Spanish are
not prone to lose ground in New Mexican Spanish.
Mexican and Standard Spanish Influence
With regard to the influence of other Spanish dialects,
perhaps the most prominent aspect of intergenerational

226 chapter twelve

 Table 12-9. Responses for ‘I saw’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
vide 36.8 49.2 54.6
vi 61.8 50.8 41.7
Other response 1.3 0.0 3.7
N 76 132 108

Table 12-10. Responses for ‘Skirt’ by Generation (percentages)

Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
naguas, nagua, enagua, enaguas 30.8 64.4 72.2
falda 50.0 30.3 26.1
Other response 7.7 5.3 1.7
No response 11.5 0.0 0.0
N 78 132 115

change in New Mexican Spanish is “standardization”
according to the Mexican Spanish norm. A simple illus-
tration of this trend is given in table 12-9. Very commonly
in New Mexican Spanish, the first person singular form
of the preterit tense for the verb ver ‘to see’ is vide ‘I saw’
(previously discussed in conjunction with map 5-8).
Although this archaic form occurs widely in the Spanish-
speaking world, it is viewed as rustic and uneducated
wherever it occurs. An educated Spanish speaker is likely
to view a sentence such as Lo vide in the same way as the
educated English speaker views the translation ‘I seen
it.’ There is a tendency, then, for speakers having contact
with the broader community of Spanish to adopt the
standard vi.
While half of the NMCOSS subjects overall offered
the standard vi, table 12-9 shows us that the frequency
of its occurrence gradually increases across the genera-
tions, from 42% in the Older group to 62% in the Younger
group. The colloquial, nonstandard form appears to be
losing ground as the Hispanic community becomes more
highly educated and gains greater exposure to formal
Spanish, a topic we will probe in chapter 14.
Individuals usually find it easier to adopt differ-
ent vocabulary than to change grammatical forms. A
vocabulary item that is rapidly undergoing standardiza-
tion in New Mexican Spanish is the word for ‘Skirt.’ Map
6-9 showed that the borrowing from Taino, naguas (less
commonly nagua and rarely enaguas or enagua in the
NMCOSS), is strongly established in Traditional Spanish,
while the standard Spanish falda is more typical of Border
Spanish but with occurrences of falda scattered through-
out the region.
Table 12-10, however, shows that the long established
Tainism is rapidly being abandoned over time. Nearly
three-fourths of the Older generation prefer naguas or
one of its alternative forms. By the third generation, not
even a third do so. We see a concomitant increase over
time in the preference for the standard variant. The falda
increase does not quite offset the naguas loss, however,
due principally to the fact that 9 members of the Younger
generation declined to label this piece of clothing. Perhaps
it’s hard to recall a new term after abandonment of a tradi-
tional term and they wished to avoid use of such an obvi-
ously English term as skirt.
A quite different case is the word for ‘Airplane.’ The
airplane is a recent phenomenon that developed only
at the beginning of the twentieth century, well after the
NMCOSS region had become part of the United States
and ties to the rest of the Spanish-speaking world had
been loosened considerably more. To label this phenome-
non in mainstream Spanish, 2 terms were borrowed from
French, aeroplano and avión. The latter has become the
most widely used standard form in world Spanish. With
regard to New Mexican Spanish, not quite half of the
NMCOSS responses are these 2 forms: 131 cases of avión
(39%) and 34 cases of aeroplano (10%)

The Permanent Certainty 227

 Table 12-11. Responses for ‘Airplane’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger
Ages 15–40
aroplano 25.0
oroplano 6.3
eroplano 5.0
aeroplano 5.0
avión 53.8
Other response 3.8
No response 1.3
N 80
In the early days of aviation, speakers of New Mexican
Spanish probably had limited exposure to those terms. But
they would have had ready access to the English labels,
the then common trisyllabic aeroplane as well as the now-
standard disyllabic airplane. Still, they must also have had
significant indirect exposure to the cultivated Spanish form
aeroplano, since a typical resolution is a four-syllable word
varying only in the initial vowel. Besides aeroplano itself
(where the first syllable is a diphthong), we have found 10
other variants on the theme, the most firmly established of
which are aroplano (85 cases, 26%), oroplano (44 cases, 13%),
and eroplano (28 cases, 8%).
Our data also include 1 case each of aeloplano, aloplano,
areplano, erplano, erroplano, oraplano, and 2 cases of arro-
plano. There are 3 other idiosyncratic cases with final
stress gathering 1 vote each: airioplán, airoplán, and erop-
lán. Amazingly, no one offered English airplane, and only
1 person claimed not to have a Spanish word, a nineteen-
year-old male from Vaughn, New Mexico (interview 247).
We think this detail and the diversity of responses indicate
that our consultants know of the existence of the Spanish
word. They’re just not quite sure what it is.
In this connection, it is important to review the
geographical distributions of the major responses.
Map 12-4 shows only the 5 major forms, the 2 standard
words avión and aeroplano and the 3 nonstandard words
aroplano, eroplano, and oroplano. This creates a rather
messy picture, but a leisurely inspection of this map
demonstrates that none of these terms represents a dialect
or subdialect area. All are dispersed in fairly random
fashion around the territory. About the only geographi-
cal observation we can make is that the standard avión
dominates in Border Spanish and the nonstandard vari-
ants dominate in Traditional Spanish. In brief, regional
228
Middle Older
Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
29.4 21.8
10.3 21.0
5.1 14.3
9.6 14.3
40.4 27.7
5.1 0.8
0.0 0.0
136 119
dialectology does not explain the diversity; any explana-
tion must consider other criteria.
Generation is one criterion (the related influence of
standard Spanish will be examined in chapter 14). Like
the map, table 12-11 includes only the 5 principal responses
for ‘Airplane.’ We present the 3 nonstandard variants
together in the first three rows to highlight the difference
with the older standard in the fourth row and the current
standard in the fifth row. The striking pattern in this
display is the cross-generational increase in preference for
the standard Spanish avión. All of the other labels decline
significantly across the generations except for aroplano,
which maintains a curious stability. But unlike ganso for
‘Turkey,’ aroplano is not associated with any community
of speakers, and we cannot imagine that it’ll endure for
very long. In sum, while 72% of the Older generation use
1 of the 5 alternative forms in roughly equal measure, the
trend across the generations is toward standardization,
with avión becoming the preference of the majority in the
Younger generation.
Another interesting case is the label for ‘Student,’
which was elicited through a picture of children seated
at their desks in a classroom facing the teacher. This
item yields 4 major variants, 2 of which are the main-
stream standard forms, estudiante (204 responses, 63%)
and alumno (just 27 responses, 8%). Another variant,
discípulo (18 responses, 6%), is also a standard Spanish
word, though elsewhere it generally refers to a follower of
a specific teacher or viewpoint, like its cognate in English,
disciple. The fourth variant is the dialectal form escuel-
ero (56 responses, 17%), a derived form of the word for
‘school,’ escuela. Map 12-5 shows that escuelero is charac-
teristic of Traditional Spanish while the other variants are
scattered pretty much randomly across the region.
chapter twelve
 12-4. ‘Airplane’

The Permanent Certainty 229

 12-5. ‘Student’

230 chapter twelve

 Table 12-12. Responses for ‘Student’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
escuelero 6.3 15.0 28.1
discípulo 0.0 1.5 14.0
estudiante 81.0 72.2 43.0
alumno 8.9 7.5 8.8
Other response 1.3 3.0 6.1
No response 2.5 0.8 0.0
N 79 133 114

Table 12-13. Responses for ‘Suit’ by Generation (percentages)

Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
vestido, vistido 10.3 31.1 69.6
traje 32.1 13.3 15.7
sute 47.4 43.0 7.8
Other response 10.3 12.6 7.0
N 78 135 115

Escuelero and discípulo have two things in common.
They are characteristic of the speech of the Older age group,
and they are rapidly disappearing from the scene (see table
12-12). Representing 28% of the choices of the Older genera-
tion, escuelero is reduced to just 6% in the third generation.
Discípulo starts off at half the level (14%) and disappears
entirely from the active lexicon of the Younger generation.
Meanwhile, the universally most unmarked label, estudi-
ante, increases from an already dominant 43% of the oldest
group to fully 81% of the youngest group. The other stan-
dard label alumno remains stable across the three gener-
ations. It is clear that New Mexican Spanish has recently
moved sharply toward the standard in labeling an entity
that epitomizes the educational scene.
Both English and Spanish:
Entre la espada y la pared
Sometimes we see evidence of the ancestral forms of
Traditional Spanish being caught ‘between the sword and
the wall,’ or as we say in English, “between a rock and a
hard place,” that is, between the two powerful forces of
English on one side and of Mexican or standard Spanish
on the other. A straightforward example is the label for
a man’s ‘Suit.’ Map 10-14 and the discussion of ‘Suit’ in
chapter 10 showed that vestido (often realized as vistido)
is a characteristic of the Traditional Spanish dialect,
especially in rural areas. But prominently represented
also are the Anglicism sute, which occurs mostly in the
Traditional Spanish area, and the Mexican Spanish traje,
which occurs mostly in the Border Spanish areas.
Vestido for ‘Suit’ is apparently a Traditional Spanish
term of long standing. And it is a “dialect marker,” one of
those forms like y’all that outsiders readily pick up on as
a distinctive feature of a particular dialect. The salience
of this dialect marker is the fact that in Standard Spanish
the word refers to a woman’s dress. No doubt this seman-
tic conflict accounts for the wholesale abandonment of
vestido/vistido for ‘Suit’ seen in table 12-13. The preference
for this term drops from 70% in the oldest generation to
10% in the youngest generation. At the same time, a recent
English borrowing, sute, is expanding rapidly. The prefer-
ential displacement of vestido/vistido by sute is manifest
already in the middle generation. By the third genera-
tion, however, another competitor comes on strong, the
Standard Spanish traje. The result of the increase of the 2
forms, Anglicism and standard, is the loss of one of those
details that make New Mexican Spanish so unique. The
Other response category in table 12-13 consists mostly
of the unassimilated English borrowing suit. But it also

The Permanent Certainty 231

 Table 12-14. Responses for ‘Quarter’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger
Ages 15–40
dos reales 10.3
veinticinco centavos, un veinticinco 9.0
peseta 17.9
quarter 9.0
cuara 42.3
Other response 10.3
No response 1.3
N 78
includes 4 occurrences of the Pachuco slang form tacuche,
offered by 4 members of the Middle generation, appropri-
ately enough all males.
The same rapid undercutting of an ancestral
Traditional Spanish lexical item is apparent in the data
for the U.S. coin ‘Quarter’ provided in table 12-14. Nine
out of 10 members of the Older generation select 1 of 3
native Spanish ways of referring to this coin. Subsequent
generations are less loyal to the native heritage. Only the
Mexican Spanish term, peseta, which our earlier map
10-7 demonstrates to be a feature of Border Spanish, gains
some strength across the three generations. On the other
hand, the variant characteristic of Traditional Spanish,
the archaic dos reales, suffers a disastrous drop of almost
50 percentage points across the three generations.
The cause of this erosion is, of course, the English
label for this distinctly U.S. cultural artifact. The English
label is sometimes realized as the spontaneous, unas-
similated English form quarter. But more common is
the phonologically integrated form cuara, where the first
peculiarly English /r/ is dropped, the typical [d]-like U.S.
pronunciation of /t/ is replaced by the virtually identi-
cal tapped /r/ of Spanish, and the /r/-vowel of the second
syllable is replaced by a good sensible Spanish /a/. As
noted in chapter 10, however, cuara is typically not fully
integrated morphologically. Like most new borrowings, it
is assigned the default masculine gender, though a minor-
ity have moved further along in the integration process,
placing this word in the feminine gender like almost all
other words ending in -a. Whether integrated or not, the
Anglicism hardly surfaces in the survey results for the
oldest generation (barely 6% of their responses). But in
two short generations it becomes the overwhelmingly
dominant form in New Mexican Spanish. Its success
232
Middle Older
Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
34.3 59.1
22.4 21.7
18.7 11.3
2.2 0.9
19.4 5.2
3.0 1.7
0.0 0.0
134 115
parallels almost exactly the demise of the distinctive dos
reales of the Traditional Spanish dialect.
A sharper temporal sequencing of the dual influences
of English and Mexican Spanish appears in the label for
‘Popcorn.’ Map 12-6 reveals that each of the 4 principal
terms for ‘Popcorn’ has dialect trappings. The ances-
tral Traditional Spanish term is rosas (literally ‘roses’).
There are a total of 35 first choices using this form, which
includes 8 instances of maíz de rosa (‘rose corn’) and 4
of rositas (‘little roses’) as well as 1 preference each for
maíz de rosas and rosas de maíz. (We are obliged to note
that in most of these cases the word maíz is pronounced
in the colloquial fashion with stress on the first vowel,
maiz, a matter that does not concern us here). The 11% of
the NMCOSS consultants who preferred 1 of these rosas
forms are distributed broadly around the Traditional
Spanish region.
In contrast, twice as many (71 persons, 21%) offered
the term palomitas (including 3 cases of palomitas de maíz
and 1 of palomas). This variant, which is characteristic of
Mexican Spanish but more broadly used in the Americas,
is strongly associated with Border Spanish even though it
is sprinkled across the Traditional Spanish territory too,
as map 12-6 shows. Only 32 people (10%) preferred another
Mexican Spanish label, esquite (once referred to as maíz
de esquite). This label is much more tightly restricted to
Border Spanish territory.
This leaves us with the fourth variant, the Anglicism,
as reported by a seventy-seven-year-old man from
Clayton, New Mexico:
(12-3) No teníanos nombre; le dicíanos popcorn,
quizás. ‘We didn’t have a word; we called it
popcorn, I guess.’ (interview 109)
chapter twelve
 12-6. ‘Popcorn’

The Permanent Certainty 233

 Table 12-15. Responses for ‘Popcorn’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger
Ages 15–40
rosas forms 0.0
popcorn 48.8
palomitas, palomas 43.8
esquite, maíz de esquite 3.8
Other response 2.5
No response 1.3
N 80
Popcorn is the majority preference with 177 responses,
53% of the 331 persons presented with this question. The
Anglicism dominates in Traditional Spanish, but it also
exists in Border Spanish as a significant minority form.
Everybody happily pronounced this “Spanish” label as it
is pronounced in English except for an eighty-eight-year-
old woman (interview 10) from Ensenada, New Mexico,
who spoke little English and produced a beautifully inte-
grated papecorne. Another 4 persons failed to provide a
response and several others made up labels such as maíz
reventado ‘exploded corn’ and maíz rompido ‘broken
corn,’ no doubt preferring to avoid using such a patently
English word.
Table 12-15 provides the generational analysis of the
4 ‘Popcorn’ terms. The Traditional Spanish rosas form
was offered by only 20% of Older group and 9% of the
Middle group and disappears entirely by the third gener-
ation. Some stability might be expected of a form that is
more widely used and is so similar to rosetas, considered
by the DRAE to be 1 of the 2 worldwide norms along with
palomitas. But worldwide norms matter little when you
find yourself between the Mexican Spanish espada and
the English pared.
Instead, the Mexican and standard Spanish label
palomitas increases from a preference level of just 12% of
the Older generation to 44% of the Younger generation.
The Anglicism popcorn was already the term of prefer-
ence for nearly half of the oldest generation, indicating
that it must have been their parents or grandparents who
introduced the English term into the Traditional Spanish
dialect. It remained the favored label over the three gener-
ations of NMCOSS consultants. The Anglicism and the
Mexican standard are now competing on equal footing.
One can only speculate on the possible outcome of this
conflict, but one thing is clear: the Traditional Spanish
rosas has been left in the dust.
234
Middle Older
Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
9.0 19.7
61.9 47.0
16.4 12.0
7.5 16.2
3.7 4.3
1.5 0.9
134 117
Another term for ‘Popcorn’ well on the way to being
discarded as well is esquite. Map 12-6 shows quite clearly
that esquite occurs only in the areas associated with Border
Spanish. Thus, the unholy alliance of Anglicisms and
Mexican/standard Spanish not only kills off features of
Traditional Spanish but also is undermining a more collo-
quial Mexican label that characterizes Border Spanish.
In the case of ‘Suit’ and ‘Popcorn,’ we find the
Traditional Spanish term losing the fight against both
an Anglicism and a Mexican form, where the Mexican
form also happens to be the general Spanish standard.
In other cases we find competition from an English loan-
word as well as 2 Spanish forms, the Mexican standard
and the more general standard. This doubling of compet-
ing Spanish forces is seen with the labels for ‘Ice cream.’
The consequences for the Traditional Spanish term are
predictable, as confirmed in table 12-16.
Map 12-7 shows the term leche nevada (literally
‘snowed milk’) hanging on across the NMCOSS terri-
tory but not so prominently in the Traditional Spanish
heartland as we might presume. Overall, 63 of 334 consul-
tants (19%) chose this label. But table 12-16 shows that this
term, which historically must have been the Traditional
Spanish preference, is now losing favor in dramatic fash-
ion, declining from nearly a third of the Older generation
to practically nothing among the Younger generation.
We see on map 12-7 that leche nevada is overwhelmed
in the Traditional Spanish area by the Anglicism, which
garnered almost twice as many preferences, the choice of
123 person (37%). This loanword was pronounced as in
English, ice cream, two-thirds of the time (83 cases), and
the map shows this nonintegrated form to occur through-
out the NMCOSS region. But this Anglicism often
turned up with some degree of integration, converting
the r to the alveolar tap consonant of Spanish, and some-
times converting the final m to an /n/ more appropriate
chapter twelve
 Table 12-16. Responses for ‘Ice cream’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger
Ages 15–40
leche nevada 3.7
ice cream variants 33.3
nieve 34.6
helado and variants 21.0
Other response 4.9
No response 2.5
N 81
to Spanish. Variable stress yielded 4 forms, in order of
frequency: aiscrim, áiscrim, aiscrín, and aiscrin. Plotting
these 4 variants together on map 12-7, we find that inte-
gration surfaces most strongly in the Traditional Spanish
area, which has been exposed to English longer. There was
also 1 attempt at further integration as aiscrema, substi-
tuting English cream with the Spanish equivalent crema,
but we have not counted this blending as the Anglicism.
The data of table 12-16 show that the Anglicism
parallels the Traditional leche nevada in being favored
by about a third of the Older age group. Like popcorn,
it was already well established among the oldest genera-
tion and holds onto its favored status in the two following
generations. So if the Anglicism displays intergenera-
tional stability, what is causing the recent decline of the
Traditional Spanish variant? Well, the other 2 Spanish
variants, of course, which together represent the major-
ity preference of the Younger generation. The use of the
colloquial Mexican form nieve, the choice of 87 consul-
tants (26%), has increased somewhat over the generations,
from 1 in 5 of the Older group to 1 in 3 of the Younger
group, and we can see in map 12-7 that nieve has intruded
beyond the typical boundaries of Border Spanish.
But a slightly larger intergenerational increase occurs
with the standard Spanish word helado, which is the label
preferred by just 36 persons overall (11%). The fact that a
few of these were pronounced deviantly—helada, hielado,
halado, and 1 instance of English orthographic influence
pronouncing the written h to yield jelado—suggests a
classroom acquisition of the label (a topic to which we
return in chapter 14). Map 12-7, which plots only the 28
nondeviant helado occurrences, shows the standard label
to be scattered randomly across the NMCOSS region,
which also implies an influence of education. Notice,
however, that the general Spanish standard helado hardly
The Permanent Certainty
Middle Older
Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
17.8 31.4
41.5 34.7
25.2 21.2
10.4 4.2
5.2 8.5
0.0 0.0
135 118
surfaces in the Border Spanish areas, where the Mexican
Spanish standard reigns supreme.
An intriguingly more complex case showing expan-
sion of forms influenced by both English and Mexican
Spanish is the label for ‘Cookie,’ which, it is important
to remember from our earlier lengthy discussion with
respect to map 10-10, was elicited by a picture of chocolate
chip cookies. A compilation of the most frequently occur-
ring forms by generation is given in table 12-17.
A first question is: what might have once been the
norm in Traditional Spanish for ‘Cookie’ as manifested
by the chocolate chip version? Well, there probably
wasn’t one, just as there wasn’t in general Spanish or in
general English. What North American English speakers
call cookies are called biscuits in most English-speaking
countries, and biscuits are quite another delectable for us.
‘Cookie’ seems not to have a long linguistic pedigree in
either English or Spanish, and the chocolate chip variety
certainly represents a rather recent cultural innovation in
New Mexico and southern Colorado.
What to call this new sweet? A small number of New
Mexican Spanish speakers were willing to expand the
scope of established terms having a more specific refer-
ence: bizcochito or bizcocho, a traditional cinnamon- or
anise-flavored cookie, and bollito or bollo, a sugar cookie.
A few others latched onto the Anglicism craque, gener-
ally used to refer to ‘Cracker.’ This in turn probably has
something to do with the fact that galleta forms in general
Spanish sometimes refer to cookies and sometimes to
crackers. In addition to 56 responses of plain galleta, we
received 12 responses of the diminutive galletita and 2
responses with a ‘sweet’ appendage, galleta dulce.
Ignoring galleta for the moment, we may observe in
the first four rows of table 12-17 a tendency for the oldest
generation to use a diminutive or one of the more specific
235
 12-7. ‘Ice cream’

236 chapter twelve

 Table 12-17. Responses for ‘Cookie’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger
Ages 15–40
bizcochito, bizcocho 6.1
bollito, bollo 2.4
craque, craque dulce 1.2
galletita 0.0
galleta, galleta dulce 32.9
cuqui, cookie 12.2
cuque 42.7
Other response 1.2
No response 1.2
N 82
terms. Whereas 27% of the Older generation selected one
of these labels, only 9% and 10% of the next two genera-
tions did so. It seems that something is being worked out
over time. And that resolution is the unadorned galleta,
the Mexican Spanish term for ‘Cookie,’ which map 10-10
shows to be particularly characteristic of Border Spanish.
This solution rises from just 10% of the Older generation
to 33% of the Younger generation. We again witness the
advance of Mexican influence.
Then there is the specific Anglicism to consider. Like
the other introduced special treats popcorn and ice cream,
the adoption of an English word was to be expected. In
fact, the majority (60%) of the Older age group did so and
that majority preference is maintained in the other two
generations. The interesting diachronic aspect, however,
is the degree of integration. In addition to 14 tokens of the
clearly English cookie, there were 55 instances of partially
adapted cuqui, which differs from English pronuncia-
tion mostly in the quality of the first vowel and the lack of
“aspiration” in the release of the initial consonant, typical
characteristics of Spanish-influenced English. Notice that
these 2 forms that are not completely integrated decline
by half (from 24% to 12%) over the generations. On the
other hand, the proportional preference for the fully inte-
grated cuque increases from 36% of the Older group to
53% of the Middle group. The Younger group, however,
achieves only 43% cuque. The sharp rise of the Mexican
galleta in the youngest generation seems to be undermin-
ing the long-established Anglicism.
Finally, let’s look at a case where English and stan-
dard Spanish team up against a traditional designation.
In both languages the standard words for ‘Harmonica’
The Permanent Certainty
Middle Older
Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
5.2 11.5
0.0 4.1
0.7 3.3
3.0 8.2
12.6 9.8
22.2 23.8
53.3 36.1
3.0 3.3
0.0 0.0
135 122
are similar in spelling (English harmonica, Spanish
armónica or harmónica) as well as in pronunciation. The
major differences in pronunciation are (a) the existence of
an initial consonant /h/ in English but not in Spanish—
again, the letter h is “silent” in standard Spanish—and
(b) a different vowel sound for the letter o in the second
syllable: /a/ in English, /o/ in Spanish. We’ll see that
these similarities produce some chaotic variation in the
NMCOSS. On the other hand, the labels traditionally
used in New Mexican Spanish are based on a very differ-
ent música de boca (literally, ‘mouth music’), which also
shows interesting variation.
Let’s first summarize the variation encountered.
The most frequently occurring label was the traditional
música de boca category with 158 preferences (48% of the
326 respondents). Nearly a third of these (47 cases) were in
the diminutive form musiquita de boca. A small number
of the total responded without the ‘mouth’ part: 9 música
and 6 musiquita. There were also single occurrences of
música de mano and música de tocar, but these are not
included in the total for música de boca.
Contrasting broadly with this category, almost as
many preferred a label on the standard Spanish/English
side, totaling 146 responses (45%). Of these, 43 are the stan-
dard Spanish armónica and 11 are the standard English
harmonica. In addition, there are 3 blends of these 2
standards. While 58 persons produced the Spanish form
with the initial consonant of English, jarmónica, another
11 altered the Spanish form using the stressed vowel of
English, armánica. And 23 employed both the initial
consonant and the stressed vowel of English, jarmánica,
which is essentially the English word pronounced with
237
 12-8. ‘Harmonica’

238 chapter twelve

 Table 12-18. Responses for ‘Harmonica’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger
Ages 15–40
música de boca, musiquita de boca 15.2
harmonica, jarmánica 21.5
armónica 25.3
jarmónica 15.2
armánica 7.6
Other response 5.1
No response 10.1
N 79
a strong Spanish accent (i.e., with a Spanish /r/ and rela-
tively tense vowels throughout).
Turning to geography, perhaps the most strik-
ing finding is that not 1 of the 5 standard based variants
(armónica, harmonica, jarmónica, armánica, jarmánica)
displays any regional clustering. Each one is so haphaz-
ardly scattered around the NMCOSS territory that
mapping is unrevealing. Of the traditional terms, only
the diminutive displays a regionally restricted distri-
bution. Map 12-8 shows that the 53 cases of musiquita
de boca (including the 6 cases of bare musiquita) occur
exclusively in the Traditional Spanish territory. For the
105 cases of the nondiminutive música de boca (includ-
ing the 9 bare música), however, no particular pattern is
revealed on the map, but the fact that this label is strewn
around the entire region is of interest.
Believe it or not, the display for Mexico (ALM mapa
812) is much, much messier. Importantly, música de boca
and the standard armónica are both dominant across the
northern half of Mexico, with the former probably having
the numerical edge. That map shows no cases of musiquita
de boca though there is 1 bare musiquita in the far south.
Bare música is also a relic form in the southern highlands of
Colombia, a country in which the usual form is the differ-
ent dulzaina and variants (ALEC vol. 3, mapa 231). These
facts suggest that it was the música de boca label that was
brought to the New Mexico colony and remained the norm
until the contact with English and standard Spanish. They
suggest, furthermore, that the diminutive variant was an
independent development in this colony as an alternative
term that spread through the Traditional Spanish area. The
ALM reports none of the English or English-influenced
variants. But also prominent in Mexico are variants with
The Permanent Certainty
Middle Older
Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
42.9 78.1
11.3 1.8
11.3 7.0
27.1 8.8
3.0 0.9
3.8 0.9
0.8 2.6
133 114
flauta ‘flute’ (e.g., flauta de boca) and órgano ‘organ’ (e.g.,
organito de boca, like the dialectal English mouth organ).
None of these alternatives surfaced in the NMCOSS.
With this background, we can now turn to the gener-
ational analysis. The raw data reveal that use of each of the
4 traditional variants (música de boca, musiquita de boca,
música, and musiquita) declines across the three gener-
ations. Consequently, we have combined the 4 in table
12-18, which shows that the traditional label has plum-
meted from favor, from over three-quarters of the Older
age group to less than half of the Middle age group to just
15% of the Younger age group.
The gap left by this loss has been filled by varied
realizations of the other Spanish and English forms. The
English harmonica and its version jarmánica, which is
lightly tuned to Spanish, were offered by only 2 members
of the Older generation but came to be the term of choice
of 1 out of 5 in the Younger generation. The Standard/
Mexican Spanish armónica was the preference of just
7% of the oldest group and rose to 1 in 4 of the young-
est group. The Spanish word with an initial consonant
as in English, jarmónica, was already favored by nearly
1 in 10 of the Older group and increased in succeeding
generations, especially in the Middle group. The opposite
blending, the English word without the initial consonant
sound, armánica, is a minor variant but 1 that increases
with time. The result of this frontal assault by the English-
Spanish-Mexican alliance is a very messy battleground
indeed in the Younger generation, with adherents to any
single banner claiming no more than a fourth of the total
group. But one intergenerational trend is abundantly
clear. The armónica/harmonica-type variants are rapidly
replacing the traditional música de boca forms.
239
 Our analysis of generational differences indicates
quite clearly that, after four centuries of vitality, this
divergent variety that we so lovingly call Traditional
Spanish has been losing—with astonishing swiftness—a
lot of its traditional vivacity. Wolfram and Schilling-Estes
(1995, 696–97) point out that dialects tend to disappear
as a result of contact either with other languages or with
other varieties of the same language. The Traditional
New Mexican Spanish dialect is dying out, and its agony
240
is attributable to both types of contact—contact with
English as a result of the U.S. takeover of the Southwest,
and contact with modern Mexican Spanish and standard
Spanish as a result of immigration and education. Both
contacts became increasingly intense during the course
of the twentieth century, and the continued viability of
this unique dialect is seriously threatened. The next three
chapters explore in more detail certain aspects of the
repercussion of these contacts.
chapter twelve
 Chap ter 13
The Long Goodbye
The Attrition and Loss
of Spanish Skills
• We saw in the previous chapter that Anglicisms
are not only expanding in New Mexican Spanish,
but also are displacing features that are characteristic of
the Traditional Spanish dialect. Borrowing words from
another language, however, is not in itself detrimental. It
is a natural process of language change that does, in fact,
produce further uniqueness or specialness.
There is a far more pernicious side to the effect of
English on Spanish in the United States—language shift.
Language shift refers to the historical process by which
a linguistic community adopts the language of another
community and gradually abandons its original heri-
tage language. New Mexican Spanish is in the throes of
language shift. The rise of English dominance and the
loss of skills in Spanish have had a devastating effect on
New Mexican Spanish, threatening in particular the very
survival of the Traditional Spanish dialect.
For the speakers of New Mexican Spanish, the
twentieth century, and the last half in particular, was a
period of unstable bilingualism in which Spanish became
increasingly viewed as less useful than English. English
was accorded the sociocultural prestige associated with
economic, political, and cultural power. When the
United States annexed the northern half of Mexico, the
Hispanic residents initially used English exclusively for
dealing with Anglos. But over the next century, the func-
tional roles of English expanded to use in school, in busi-
ness, in church, in recreation, in all facets of life. At the
same time, the social scope of Spanish steadily eroded,
eventually relegating the ethnic heritage language to use
predominantly in the home and in the village or barrio.
Moreover, in recent decades English has invaded these last
domains of Spanish language use. Many, many children
of Hispanic heritage have now abandoned the Spanish
language entirely. As Juan Antonio Trujillo observes
(2000, 125), “the transition to English monolingualism
continues unchecked as English expands its role as the
universal language of economic and social success.”
Spanish-speaking parents are only too willing to
blame themselves for their children’s loss of Spanish,
as explained by a forty-seven-year-old woman from
Clovis, New Mexico, in the eastern part of the state on
the Texas border:
(13-1) En este lugar, aquí en Clovis, era muy difícil
hablar el español sin que se riera el güero de
uno. Le hacían busla [=burla] a uno, so, pa’ mí,
cuando yo truje mis hijas al mundo yo dije que
primero yo quería que hablaran inglés pa’ que no
se rieran de ellas. ‘In this place, here in Clovis,
241
 it was very difficult to speak Spanish without an
Anglo laughing at you. They’d make fun of you,
so, for me, when I brought my daughters into
this world I said that I wanted them to speak
English first so they wouldn’t laugh at them.’
(interview 351)
That same motivation is reported by children. One such
report comes from a forty-six-year-old man from Ratón,
New Mexico, in the extreme north of the state on the
Colorado border. He is a passive bilingual, fairly adept
at understanding the Spanish of the interviewer, but
extremely limited in his productive ability in Spanish. He
was assigned the lowest rating on our Spanish proficiency
scale. He says, in English of course,
(13-2) Both of us, my wife [also a native of Ratón]
and I, recalled that there wasn’t a lot of Spanish
spoken in the home. And we asked my father-
in-law, Was that a conscious decision on their
part not to speak Spanish or not to teach his
children Spanish? And he said, Yes, it very
well—definitely was a conscious decision on his
part. He said, “I maybe made a lot of mistakes
in my life.” Probably thought that maybe
that was one. But at the time he felt that the
Spanish was not an important thing. In fact,
he—everything that he was observing at the
time indicated that speaking English well was
the way to get ahead in life and have a better
future for yourself. So he did make a conscious
effort not to teach his children Spanish.
(interview 309)
Very different in Spanish skills and from the other
end of the state, but reporting a similar situation, is a
twenty-one-year-old woman from Las Cruces (interview
149). She comments on the strategy adopted by her father,
himself an immigrant born in Mexico:
(13-3) [A]ntes para que nosotros aprendiéramos
inglés, él nos hablaba en inglés. ‘[E]arlier so
that we would learn English, he’d speak to us
in English.’
Curiously, now that the children are grown, she says, her
father speaks to them only in Spanish. And more curi-
ous still, though this woman is fully fluent in Spanish, she
claims she now speaks only English to him.
Many Hispanics who have wound up monolingual in
242
English complain that their parents didn’t “teach” them
Spanish at home. But this is an unfair complaint, and
probably an invalid complaint in most cases. In the first
place, children don’t learn their native language by teach-
ing but rather simply by exposure. In the second place,
it seems that many, many Hispanics who are essentially
monolingual in English (we may call them “Anglophone”
Hispanics) were indeed exposed to Spanish in the home.
But—and this is the crucial point—when the child or an
older sibling entered school and became immersed in the
larger social reality, it was the child who brought English
into the home and promoted its use there. How else can we
explain such recurring reports as the comment in example
13-4 by an eighteen-year-old woman from Roswell?
(13-4) Mi papá habla no más español, pero lo contesto
en inglés. ‘My dad speaks only Spanish, but I
answer him in English.’ (interview 332)
Children introduce far more changes into the home
than we recognize. In the use of special family labels for
siblings, parents, grandparents, and others, it is usually
the parents and other adults who follow the lead of the
child whose still imperfect pronunciation produces Beto
for Alberto, Chela for Graciela, and so forth. And as chil-
dren become exposed to the trends of a more dominant
society outside the home, they are definitely the lead-
ers in creating cultural change in the home, whether it
is turkey instead of tamales at Christmas, video games
instead of homemade toys, or English instead of Spanish.
Nevertheless, it is no more just to blame the child for
being a sensitive human being than it is to blame an adult
for being a sensitive parent. The no-fault result is massive
language shift, an unprecedented rupture in the trans-
mission of the heritage language.
More and more, those who speak Spanish in the
southwestern United States tend to be first generation
Mexican immigrants and their children (as demonstrated
in Bills 1989; Bills, Hernández Chávez, and Hudson 1995;
Hudson, Bills, and Hernández Chávez 1995; McCullough
and Jenkins 2005; and many other studies). And even the
children of immigrants, who tend to grow up in thor-
oughly Spanish-speaking homes, rapidly become domi-
nant in English. Such is the case of a twenty-five-year-old
male (interview 312) from Rocky Ford, Colorado, who
reports that although his immigrant mother is monolin-
gual in Spanish, he speaks only English with his siblings
and with his daughter.
The consequences of this language shift are clear in
our survey. It must be remembered that we designed our
chapter thirteen
 Table 13-1. Generation by Age acquired English (percentages)
Younger
Ages 15–40
(Co-)First language 41.6
Before age 6 28.6
At age 6 27.3
After age 6 2.6
N 77
survey to include only native-born Hispanics and our
intent was to document all manifestations of natively
spoken Spanish, whether fluent or not. Consequently, all
of our consultants were bilingual to some degree. Overall,
67% of our consultants rated their English as “good” and
62% rated their Spanish as “good.” Although a few of
the oldest were close to being monolingual in Spanish,
the majority reported stronger speaking proficiency in
English than in Spanish. Of the 293 consultants for whom
we have self-ratings in both languages, only 44 claimed
their Spanish was better than their English—and 75% of
these persons were age seventy or older. One of the biggest
obstacles to achieving the desired balance of consultants
across ages was lining up persons under the age of forty
who had sufficient skills (and confidence) in Spanish to
participate. A few of the youngest subjects were essen-
tially passive bilinguals with a markedly limited produc-
tive ability in Spanish. The NMCOSS did not sample the
speech of the many other Hispanics who possess still
more rudimentary Spanish skills—or none at all.
We examine the attrition of Spanish skills in this
chapter by exploring the associations between kinds of
linguistic responses and three characteristics of the consul-
tants. In addition to the age/generation variable treated in
the preceding chapter, we deal here with two other vari-
ables: Spanish language proficiency and the age at which
English was acquired. As might be expected, these three
variables are substantially associated with one another.
That is, younger people tend to have learned English at an
earlier age and to have less proficiency in Spanish while
older people generally acquired English only as a second
language and have stronger Spanish skills.
Regarding language acquisition, the NMCOSS
interviewers elicited information from 331 consultants
concerning the age at which they learned Spanish and the
age at which they learned English. All reported learning
Spanish, at least to some extent, as children in their homes
(or in their grandparents’ homes). Acquisition of English,
The Long Goodbye
Middle Older
Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
15.9 7.3
14.3 8.6
58.7 50.0
11.1 34.4
126 128
however, was a very different story. While some consultants
reported learning English first or at the same time as they
learned Spanish, only one-third claimed to have acquired
English before starting school. Nearly half (48%) were
essentially monolingual in Spanish until starting school at
the age of six, and a number of others acquired English still
later in life. We divide the consultants into four groups for
age at which English was learned: (1) as first language or
co-first language along with Spanish, (2) before age six, (3)
at six years of age, and (4) at seven or more years of age.
Table 13-1 displays the interaction of the different age
groups with the category of English acquisition. It shows,
for example, that only 16% of the Older generation learned
English before starting school while 30% of the Middle
generation did so and fully 70% of the Younger generation
did so: a striking three-generation transition to the early
acquisition of English.
With regard to Spanish ability, the NMCOSS data-
base contains information on three measures of profi-
ciency for both Spanish and English. First, during the
course of the interview the consultant was asked to provide
a self-assessment of speaking ability in each language.
Second, after completing the interview, the interviewer
wrote down an independent evaluation of the consultant’s
proficiency in the two languages. Finally, the persons who
listened to the recorded interview for data entry provided
another independent assessment. The last measurement is
the one utilized here for analysis. We consider it the most
reliable since there were fewer people involved in making
this assessment and, in addition, almost all of these ratings
were double-checked by two researchers (Ysaura Bernal-
Enríquez and Garland Bills). We used a five-point scale
to rate each consultant’s proficiency, but, as pointed out
earlier, most consultants had good Spanish skills. We gave
only 5 persons the lowest rating (1) and 10 others the second
lowest rating (2). Consequently, for the cross-tabulation
analysis, we combine the three lowest ratings into a “Weak”
Spanish proficiency category.
243
 Table 13-2. Generation by Spanish proficiency (percentages)
Younger
Ages 15–40
Weak (1–3) 42.2
Adequate (4) 20.4
Strong (5) 37.3
N 83
Table 13-3. Age acquired English by Spanish proficiency (percentages)
(Co-)First language Before age 6
Weak (1–3) 47.5
Adequate (4) 21.3
Strong (5) 31.1
N 61
The cross-tabulation of age group and Spanish abil-
ity in table 13-2 shows a clear interaction between the two
variables. Only 3% of the Older generation was assessed
by the data transcriber as having “Weak” proficiency in
Spanish. But 12% of the Middle age group received that
low assessment and 42% of the Younger group did. The
intergenerational decline in Spanish ability is sharp.
Relatedly, those who learned English later in life
tend to enjoy greater fluency in Spanish and those who
learned English early tend to have weaker Spanish ability,
as demonstrated in table 13-3. Only 2% of the late English
acquirers were judged to have weak Spanish skills while
48% of those who claimed English as a first language were
so judged.
How closely associated are these three variables of
age, English acquisition, and Spanish proficiency? Close
indeed. Each of the cross-tabulations shows a positive and
highly significant Pearson correlation (a measure of the
linear association between the two variables, with values
ranging from -1 to 1) as follows:
Age and age of acquisition of English .47
Age and Spanish proficiency .44
Spanish proficiency and age of
acquisition of English .44
However, these correlations are not so high (i.e., approach-
ing the absolute value of 1) as to suggest that the three vari-
ables represent just one measure. They decidedly are not
measuring exactly the same thing. Each variable contributes
244
Middle Older
Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
12.4 2.9
29.9 13.1
57.7 83.9
137 137
At age 6 After age 6
19.6 8.8 1.7
27.4 22.6 11.7
52.9 68.6 86.7
51 159 60
independently to an understanding of the linguistic varia-
tion we encounter. We draw on all three variables for the
analysis of Spanish attrition in this chapter.
The loss of skills in Spanish shows up in a number
of ways in the NMCOSS linguistic data. Prominent are
the following five effects: (1) consultants were sometimes
unable (or unwilling) to provide any response at all to
the given stimulus; (2) at other times they claimed that
they would just use the English word since they’d never
heard or didn’t know the equivalent in Spanish; (3) while
some consultants were able to respond without hesitation,
others required assistance from the interviewer regard-
ing a possible response; (4) consultants also occasion-
ally came up with erroneous, phonologically distorted,
or otherwise less accurate responses; and finally, (5) the
decline in Spanish ability shows interesting associations
with variation in New Mexican Spanish and supports
other evidence about future directions of the dialect. We
address each of these topics in separate sections.
Inability to Respond
Because all of our consultants were born and raised
in the NMCOSS region, all have some ability in both
English and Spanish, though with varying degrees of
language dominance. Those more dominant in English
naturally had more problems of lexical access in Spanish.
Consultants would occasionally conclude the elicita-
tion of a specific linguistic form with a decisive No sé ‘I
don’t know’ or No sé cómo le dicen ‘I don’t know what it’s
called.’ We have listed such reactions as “No response” in
chapter thirteen
 Table 13-4. No response for selected variables by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
‘Grasshopper’ 7.4 0.7 0.0
‘Skirt’ 11.5 0.0 0.0
‘Goose’ 13.4 7.4 4.8
‘Apricot’ 14.3 4.5 2.6
‘Purple’ 17.3 9.8 1.6
‘Cellar’ 18.8 0.7 0.0
‘Moth’ 19.0 5.4 6.7
‘Rouge’ 20.0 6.3 3.4
‘Shear’ (sheep) 21.5 6.0 0.8
‘Porcupine’ 22.8 4.4 2.5
‘Grinding stone’ 32.4 21.3 7.0
‘Temple’ (of head) 32.9 9.2 4.2
‘Tadpole’ 34.6 17.0 15.8
‘Mortar’ 35.7 26.5 14.3
‘Dove’ 37.0 21.5 10.7
‘Marrow’ 37.0 7.9 0.9
‘Calf of leg’ 52.2 36.6 16.5
‘Wattle’ (of turkey) 58.8 38.4 30.3
‘Hem of skirt’ 64.3 33.3 28.4

the tables of the preceding chapter. For example, we saw
in table 12-4 that 6% of the Older group, 8% of the Middle
group, and 22% of the Younger group could provide no
response at all for ‘Bat.’ Table 12-7 for ‘Temple’ shows
a similar generational trend of inability to respond,
from 4% of the oldest generation to fully one-third of the
youngest generation.
In this section, we examine the possibility that the
inability to respond is a consequence of diminished
Spanish skills. The failure to call up a particular word may
amount to nothing more than simply a temporary access
problem, as when the specific term you were trying to recall
in an afternoon telephone conversation suddenly occurs to
you at bedtime. Or it may mean that your familiarity with
the word is sufficiently weak that you might never indepen-
dently recall it though you would understand it when used
by others. Or it could be that your mental dictionary just
doesn’t contain that word. Whatever the causes, the cross-
generation weakening in the ability to respond is a pattern
that occurs repeatedly and appears to be a reflection of loss
of Spanish skills through time.
Table 13-4 provides summary generational data for a
small sample of variables for which a number of consul-
tants fired blanks. In each case we see a declining ability to
respond with each younger generation. ‘Skirt,’ for exam-
ple, provoked no failures to respond among the Older or
Middle group but 12% of the Younger group were unable
to respond. For ‘Hem of skirt,’ many consultants in all
three generations gave up on producing a response, rang-
ing up to almost two-thirds of the youngest generation.
This kind of response is related to language acqui-
sition as well. Childhood bilingualism or multilingual-
ism is a perfectly natural phenomenon. To the chagrin of
adults who struggle mightily to learn a little bit of a second
language, children are able to become fluent in two or more
languages with great ease. However, in a situation of rapid
language shift with its turmoil of language attitudes, the
acquisition of the societally dominant language is often
associated with reduced skills in the heritage language.
Inability to respond is one manifestation of underdevel-
oped skills that shows a pattern of consistent correlations
with the age of acquisition of English.

The Long Goodbye 245

 Table 13-5. Responses for ‘Bat’ by Age acquired English (percentages)
(Co-)First language Before age 6 At age 6 After age 6
ratón volador 21.7 51.0 54.9 67.9
murciélago and variants 26.7 23.5 19.6 20.8
bat 23.3 11.8 11.1 1.9
bate 3.3 3.9 3.3 1.9
Other response 5.0 0.0 2.6 1.9
No response 20.0 9.8 8.5 5.7
N 60 51 153 53

Table 13-6. No response for selected variables by Age acquired English (percentages)
(Co-)First language Before age 6 At age 6 After age 6
‘Umbrella’ 10.5 10.6 2.7 0.0
‘Cellar’ 15.8 6.3 2.7 0.0
‘Porcupine’ 16.7 13.7 5.2 3.8
‘Crow’ 25.0 7.8 3.9 1.9
‘Thread’ (a needle) 31.3 14.9 7.9 6.5
‘Marrow’ 34.6 16.7 6.3 2.0
‘Belch’ 35.3 24.4 11.2 4.1
‘Mane’ 35.8 23.5 16.9 5.8
‘Ankle’ 42.3 31.1 23.0 16.3
‘Chin’ 51.0 52.0 22.5 16.3

For example, the cross-tabulation of the responses
for ‘Bat’ according to English acquisition is displayed in
table 13-5. The trends seen in this table are remarkably
parallel to those seen in table 12-4 for generation. Among
those who claimed English as a mother tongue, the pref-
erence for Traditional Spanish ratón volador drops dras-
tically and the preference for English bat increases. The
murciélago variants hold steady across the groups. And
the failure to provide any response at all becomes more
prominent with each category of earlier acquisition of
English, rising from barely 1 in 20 of the late English
learners to 1 in 5 of the very early English learners.
Table 13-6 lists a sample of other variables that illus-
trate this pattern. In each case, the earlier English is
acquired, the greater the difficulty in providing a Spanish
label for the given stimulus. For example, 11% of those
who acquired English before starting school were unable
to provide a response for ‘Umbrella’; none of the late
English learners had such difficulty.
One might suppose that these patterns of perfor-
mance difficulty do not really indicate language loss but
rather reveal psychological factors that cause those of
younger age and less exposure to Spanish in early child-
hood to feel less secure in the interview situation and to be
more guarded in displaying their command of Spanish.
We are able to show, however, that such performance
errors are directly related to Spanish proficiency.
Once again, let’s begin with the responses for ‘Bat.’
Table 13-7 lists those responses for three levels of Spanish
proficiency. The results in table 13-7 reveal the same trends
observed in tables 12-4 for generation and 13-5 for English
acquisition. As Spanish ability weakens, the Traditional
Spanish form declines and the English form increases.
But unlike the previous two tables, the standard label also
decreases. And most significant for the present discus-
sion, the inability to respond increases substantially, from
just 5% of the Strong proficiency group to 29% of the Weak
proficiency group.
Now, it might be objected that the Spanish profi-
ciency variable and inability to respond are the same
thing, that is, that inability to respond is simply a lack of
ability in Spanish. Well, both are tapping into matters of

246 chapter thirteen

 Table 13-7. Responses for ‘Bat’ by Spanish proficiency (percentages)
Weak (1–3) Adequate (4) Strong (5)
ratón volador 14.5 50.0 58.9
murciélago and variants 7.3 18.9 26.2
bat 38.2 9.5 6.5
bate 7.3 5.4 1.4
Other response 3.6 2.7 2.3
No response 29.1 13.5 4.7
N 55 74 214

Table 13-8. No response for selected variables by Spanish proficiency (percentages)

Weak (1–3) Adequate (4) Strong (5)
‘Trunk’ 9.6 6.9 0.0
‘Strawberry’ 11.1 6.9 2.9
‘Nuts’ 16.7 5.6 0.5
‘Rubber band’ 18.2 2.8 1.0
‘Cellar’ 19.2 2.7 2.0
‘Scorpion’ 20.4 11.1 10.0
‘Roadrunner’ 25.5 16.7 7.0
‘Sideburns’ 34.7 22.5 7.0
‘Hummingbird’ 37.0 14.1 8.9
‘Buzzard’ 49.1 44.4 26.4
‘Marrow’ 54.5 11.8 3.0
‘Wattle’ (of turkey) 58.1 41.0 35.8
‘Waterfall’ 58.5 38.4 26.1

linguistic performance. But one’s ability in a language as
assessed in global fashion based on performance during
a lengthy interview is very different from one’s accession
and use of a specific linguistic feature. Use of a specific
linguistic variable on a single occasion can be affected by
all sorts of performance factors other than proficiency
in the language. Thus, table 13-7 shows that 5% of even
those judged to have strong Spanish skills were unable to
provide a label for ‘Bat.’ We would have to be very worried
about our assessment of proficiency if that measure failed
to show associations with linguistic phenomena such as
inability to respond that are considered manifestations
of lack of proficiency. The fact that the associations are
usually strong provides support for the validity of both.
Table 13-8 shows the proportion of No responses
at three proficiency levels for a variety of other lexical
variables. Once again, in every case there is a consistent
increase in the percentage of those unable to respond
as the assessed ability level decreases. Thus, while only
1 in 100 of those showing strong Spanish skills gave up
on providing a label for ‘Rubber band,’ 1 out of 5 of those
with weak skills did so.
English Response to Fill a Lexical Gap
Less common than no response at all, but still gener-
ally revealing of language loss, is the confession by some
consultants that they would simply use the English word
to label the particular stimulus. Such interjection of
English words is, of course, a common phenomenon in
everyday speech in this region and is often derided with
the pejorative labels Tex-Mex, mocho, or pocho. But it is
perfectly natural behavior in a linguistic situation where
almost everyone who knows Spanish is also fluent in

The Long Goodbye 247

English. Still, during an interview carried out in Spanish
where the understood topic is the Spanish language, the
ones who are more likely to resort to responding with
a bare English word are those who are younger, those
who acquired English earlier, and those who display less
Spanish proficiency.
For example, up to a fourth of our consultants had
a gap in their Spanish mental lexicons for ‘Bat,’ though
the word bat seemed firmly ensconced in their English
inventory. The filling of this Spanish lexical gap with the
English word is seen in the three tables for ‘Bat’: 12-4,
13-5, and 13-7. We see that an increased frequency of the
“default English” strategy occurs with each younger age
group, each earlier stage of English acquisition, and each
lower level of Spanish proficiency. Given that bats are
ubiquitous in the region, the fact that 23% of the NMCOSS
consultants were unable to respond or could respond only
in English is telling.
Tables 13-9 to 13-11 provide a few additional exam-
ples of this use of English to fill a lexical gap for our three
measures of language attrition: generation, age of acqui-
sition of English, and proficiency in Spanish. Table 13-9
reveals, to cite just 1 case, that many consultants used the
English word ladybug to identify that common and distinc-
tive insect, but with a substantially greater dependence on
English with each younger generation. (The reversed trend
for ‘Panties’ will be discussed following Table 13-11.)
Table 13-10 shows a similar increase in reliance on
English with each earlier stage of learning of English. For
instance, a fourth or more of those who learned English
before starting school resorted to English praying mantis
or walking stick to label this insect, but only 1 person
among the late acquirers of English did so.
Finally, the same trend of increased reliance on
English is displayed for Spanish ability in table 13-11. For
example, 1 in 10 of those having weak Spanish skills had
to resort to English grasshopper while none of those with
strong Spanish needed to do so.
Several reasons motivate our inclusion of ‘Panties’
as the last item in the preceding three tables. First, it
shows that language use is complex and there is no
simple switch mechanism to characterize when a Spanish
speaker resorts to using an English word. The ‘Panties’
variable illustrates a spontaneous borrowing, but it also
exemplifies the process of integration of an Anglicism,
as already discussed with reference to table 12-6. There it
was demonstrated that the fully integrated pantes exhib-
its increased use by the younger age groups. Here, table
13-9 shows decreased recourse to a nonintegrated English
word (panties, bloomers, underwear) in the younger
248
generation, a reversal of the tendency the table is intended
to document. The reversal illustrates the fact that the
linguistic process of integrating an English word is quite
different from the psychological process of latching onto
English to make up for a deficiency in Spanish.
Second, although the variable ‘Panties’ fails to follow
the attrition pattern in table 13-9, it certainly does adhere to
the attrition patterns in tables 13-10 and 13-11. Why should
that be? Well, linguistic integration of a borrowed word
is a process that requires time, typically a generation or
two, and our Younger generation reflects that increased
time with increased use of the integrated pantes. On the
other hand, resorting to English to fill a lexical gap mani-
fests a weakness in Spanish and is therefore associated with
general proficiency in Spanish as well as with the early
acquisition of English that might impede the forming of a
comprehensive foundation in Spanish. Finally, the different
associations displayed for ‘Panties’ in these tables demon-
strates the point made earlier that the age, age acquired
English, and Spanish proficiency variables do not measure
the same thing. They are independent variables.
Prompt Required
When a consultant could not independently come up with
a response to a stimulus, the interviewer would often offer
one or more possible variants as a prompt. Again, there are
surely many different psychological reasons for needing
a prompt to access a lexical item. Memory loss associated
with older age is surely one. Performance in the test-like
situation of responding to specific elicitation is another. But
in the NMCOSS situation, reduced dominance of Spanish
is clearly one of the most salient reasons.
Table 13-12 displays the responses to the activity
‘Thread (a needle)’ for the three generational groups.
Ensartar is one of those archaisms that is widespread in
the Americas, according to Lerner (1974). For example,
it is apparently the most widely used form in Colombia
(ALEC vol. 4, mapa 68). In New Mexican Spanish it is the
only label of importance for this activity, being the pref-
erence of three-quarters (76%) of the consultants over-
all. Yet barely half (55%) of the youngest generation made
this selection. Moreover, of those persons in the Younger
age group who expressed a preference for ensartar, 57%
had to be prompted to do so. Since only 17% of the oldest
generation and a third of the middle generation required
such prompting, we may guess that prompts reveal a loss
of Spanish language skills. As for the Castilian standard
variant, the single instance of enhebrar was prompted, and
of 2 truncated versions (hebrar) offered, 1 was prompted.
chapter thirteen
Table 13-9. Lexical gap English response for selected variables by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
‘Barber’ 3.9 2.3 0.0
‘Boat’ 5.1 0.8 0.8
‘Dragonfly’ 17.5 9.8 3.4
‘Scorpion’ 23.2 9.2 3.2
‘Ladybug’ 56.8 46.6 27.7
‘Panties’ 19.2 29.1 29.7

Table 13-10. Lexical gap English response for selected variables by

Age acquired English (percentages)
(Co-)First language Before age 6 At age 6 After age 6
‘Moth’ 5.7 3.9 3.4 0.0
‘Purple’ 8.3 8.0 2.6 0.0
‘Quarter’ 8.8 4.3 2.0 2.0
‘Buzzard’ 16.7 15.7 8.7 7.5
‘Sideburns’ 18.0 12.8 6.7 2.0
‘Hummingbird’ 29.3 11.8 9.8 0.0
‘Praying mantis’ 29.6 24.5 17.6 2.0
‘Porcupine’ 35.2 13.7 13.7 0.0
‘Panties’ 35.7 31.9 26.0 16.3

Table 13-11. Lexical gap English response for selected variables by

Spanish proficiency (percentages)
Weak (1–3) Adequate (4) Strong (5)
‘Crow’ 9.1 4.1 1.9
‘Calf of leg’ 9.5 8.7 1.5
‘Blouse’ 9.8 5.6 5.3
‘Grasshopper’ 10.9 1.4 0.0
‘Cellar’ 11.5 4.1 2.0
‘Ankle’ 12.2 4.3 5.0
‘Goose’ 18.5 4.1 3.7
‘Umbrella’ 27.5 9.7 2.9
‘Bat’ 38.2 9.5 6.5
‘Roadrunner’ 29.1 22.2 19.2
‘Rouge’ 49.0 43.7 25.5
‘Panties’ 39.2 29.2 23.0

The Long Goodbye 249

 Table 13-12. Responses for ‘Thread’ (a needle) by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
ensartar 55.2 78.6 86.9
Percent of ensartar prompted 56.8 33.0 17.2
Other response 14.9 12.2 5.6
No response 29.9 9.2 7.5
N 67 131 107

Table 13-13. Responses for ‘Temple’ by Age acquired English (percentages)

(Co-)First language Before age 6 At age 6 After age 6
sentido, sintido 11.1 16.0 21.5 32.0
sien 14.8 38.0 42.3 56.0
templo 24.1 24.0 11.4 4.0
Percent of Spanish prompted 32.4 20.0 16.0 10.6
temple 13.0 2.0 4.7 2.0
Other response 13.0 2.0 8.7 2.0
No response 24.1 18.0 11.4 4.0
N 54 50 149 50

Also revealing the loss of skills, of course, is the fact
that 30% of the youngest generation offered no response
at all. And the remainder of this Younger group were only
able to provide a descriptive phrase (e.g., meter el hilo en
la abuja ‘insert the thread in the needle’) or attempt to
coin a word (e.g., abujear ‘to needle[?]’).
Prompting is also associated with how early an indi-
vidual learned English. In table 13-13, for example, the
periods of English acquisition are cross-tabulated with
the responses for ‘Temple,’ which has 3 frequently occur-
ring labels. It is instructive to compare these findings with
those of table 12-7 for generation. Across both successively
younger age groups and successively earlier English acqui-
sition groups, the standard Spanish sien decreases substan-
tially and the integrated Anglicism templo increases
substantially. The Traditional Spanish sentido/sintido,
however, shows considerably greater slippage across the
English acquisition stages than across the generations.
But an important point revealed in table 13-13 is the
attrition of Spanish vocabulary generally. While 92% of
the late English acquirers selected 1 of the 3 common
labels, only 50% of those with English as a mother tongue
did so. Moreover, 1 in 3 (32%) of these responses had to be
prompted (versus 1 in 10 among the late English acquir-
ers). Finally, as additional evidence of Spanish language
loss, another quarter (24%) of the more Anglophone group
could provide no label at all, and another 13% offered only
the English term.
We previously demonstrated in this chapter that
people who are younger, learned English at an earlier age,
and have more restricted competence in Spanish tend to
have more difficulty responding to the elicitations. It is
to be expected, then, that those same groups will require
more prompts. That is indeed the case. However, although
both generation and English acquisition are frequently
associated with the need for a prompt, Spanish profi-
ciency pretty consistently shows the strongest correlation.
Consequently, we limit our further discussion of prompt-
ing to that single extralinguistic variable.
Table 13-14 shows the impact of proficiency on the
need for a prompt for a series of lexical variables. In the
calculation of the prompt percentages in this table we have
excluded all cases of no response and nonintegrated English
response. That is, the prompts are calculated as a percent-
age of the Spanish responses only. Thus, among those with
a Weak level of proficiency, two-thirds had to be prompted
to produce a Spanish label for ‘Bat’ and ‘Hummingbird.’
The consistent display in table 13-14 of significantly more
prompts among those with less ability in Spanish is a prom-
inent manifestation of loss of Spanish fluency.

250 chapter thirteen

 Table 13-14. Prompt required for selected variables by Spanish proficiency (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
‘Quarter’ 5.8 2.9 2.0
‘Tin can’ 11.5 0.0 0.5
‘Nuts’ 21.4 7.5 3.0
‘Umbrella’ 24.0 10.9 4.1
‘Earthworm’ 24.0 15.3 10.1
‘Rubber band’ 29.2 17.5 9.3
‘Trunk’ 31.0 20.9 5.8
‘Grasshopper’ 34.8 15.7 5.2
‘Strawberry’ 37.5 20.8 11.7
‘Calf of leg’ 38.5 11.1 13.8
‘Temple’ 40.0 26.3 12.0
‘Belch’ 41.7 21.8 9.6
‘Purple’ 42.5 28.3 12.2
‘Dove’ 43.8 21.3 19.2
‘Dragonfly’ 53.3 50.0 30.9
‘Crow’ 55.6 40.9 23.4
‘Roadrunner’ 60.0 54.5 33.5
‘Ankle’ 64.3 39.2 22.5
‘Praying mantis’ 66.7 42.9 39.6
‘Bat’ 66.7 45.6 21.6
‘Hummingbird’ 68.8 44.9 20.0
‘Buzzard’ 68.8 61.8 39.3

Nonspecific Response
No response, an English response, and the need for a
prompt all reveal a weakening of Spanish ability among
the NMCOSS consultants. But even where individuals
come up with a response, we find telltale indications of
the attrition of Spanish skills. One such indication is a
response that is vague or nonspecific. Consider, for exam-
ple, the labels for the ‘Mane’ of a horse, for which we find
three principal categories of response. First, 176 of 336
consultants (52%) favored the appropriate term clin or
crin. As in Mexico (ALM mapa 647), the preferred real-
ization was clin; only 8 of our consultants chose the crin
variant that seems to be preferred in Spain (according to
the DRAE). Second, 67 persons (20%) offered no response
at all. And third, another 20% (66 persons) responded
imprecisely with a general term for ‘Hair,’ cabello or pelo.
These three categories of response for ‘Mane’ are plot-
ted on map 13-1. We see at a glance that there is nothing
indicative of regional dialect variation in this display. The
three categories—appropriate, clueless, and nonspecific—
occur haphazardly in all sectors. We must look elsewhere
than geography for any explanation of the considerable
variation we find.
We already saw in table 13-6 that the No response cate-
gory for ‘Mane’ increases with earlier points in the acquisi-
tion of English. Table 13-15 shows this variable’s association
with age. All three of the major response categories show
strong relationships to age. Eight out of 10 in the Older
generation identified the ‘Mane’ of a horse appropriately as
clin (or crin), but only 5 in 10 in the Middle generation and
2 in 10 in the Younger generation did so. The most common

The Long Goodbye 251

 13-1. ‘Mane’

252 chapter thirteen

 Table 13-15. Responses for ‘Mane’ by Generation (percentages)
Younger Middle Older
Ages 15–40 Ages 41–64 Ages 65–96
clin, crin 19.0 47.1 80.2
cabello, pelo 40.5 20.6 5.0
mane 6.3 8.1 1.7
Other response 3.8 2.9 1.7
No response 30.4 21.3 11.6
N 79 136 121

Table 13-16. Responses for ‘Earthworm’ by Age acquired English (percentages)

(Co-)First language Before age 6 At age 6 After age 6
lumbriz and variants 50.9 66.7 77.1 88.2
gusano 45.5 33.3 20.3 11.8
Other or No response 3.6 0.0 2.6 0.0
N 55 51 153 50

response among the youngest group, even more common
than no response at all, was simply the loosely descriptive
word for ‘Hair,’ cabello or pelo.
Now, the point might be taken that the older consul-
tants are more likely to have grown up in a rural society
where a term for ‘Mane’ was apt to be used on a regular
basis. That is so. But the generation differences are too
great for this to be the sole explanation. We are confident
that far more than 19% of the Younger group know the
English term. In fact, 6% so responded even knowing we
were seeking their Spanish label. It might also be pointed
out that our vocabulary expands with experience gained
in the world, especially with regard to words like ‘Mane’
that may be alien to daily life. That too is so. But these
people in the Younger group are hardly spring chickens.
We wouldn’t be willing to bet that fifty years from now
80% of this group will be able to respond with clin. We
cannot escape the conclusion that the generational differ-
ences in attempts to label ‘Mane’ reflect a serious diminu-
tion over time in Spanish language dexterity.
A similar case of imprecise labeling is seen in the
response for ‘Earthworm.’ With this variable we do
encounter an interesting detail of geographical variation,
but we leave that discussion to the concluding chapter
(see map 16-13). Almost three-fourths of our consultants
(242 of 335, 72%) offered an appropriately specific term
for ‘Earthworm,’ usually lumbriz (198 cases). We also
occasionally received related responses of (in descend-
ing order of frequency) lumbricia (26 cases), the standard
variant lombriz (13), and lumbriza (5). But another fourth
of our sample (85 persons, 25%) could come up with only
the general term for ‘worm,’ gusano.
We already saw (table 13-14) that ‘Earthworm’ is one of
those terms that often requires a prompt and is associated
with Spanish proficiency. And like ‘Mane,’ the responses
are closely related to the generation; for example, only 16%
of the Older generation offered the nonspecific gusano, but
41% of the Younger generation did so. In this case, however
the strongest association is with the age of English acqui-
sition. Table 13-16 reveals that 88% of the late acquirers of
English identified an ‘Earthworm’ as one of the lumbriz
variants. Each earlier category of English acquisition shows
a decline in use of a specific term, down to barely half of
the group with English as a first language. And at each
earlier stage of English acquisition, we find a compensa-
tory increase in the more general, nonspecific term gusano.
Gusano. A befitting image for linguistic decay.
The decay is also seen in the loss of a Spanish lexical
item for which there exists (to our knowledge) no equiva-
lent word in English. Corva refers to the curved area of
the leg behind the knee. Almost half of the NMCOSS
consultants (155 of 316) offered this term for the variable

The Long Goodbye 253

 Table 13-17. Responses for ‘Back of knee’ by Spanish proficiency (percentages)
Weak (1–3)
corva and variants 15.2
rodilla and canilla forms 19.6
Other response 0.0
No response 65.2
N 46
‘Back of knee,’ and we see in map 13-2 that this term is
used throughout the NMCOSS region. A small number of
respondents proposed an array of related forms, ranging
from the acceptable corvilla and corvo to the near-misses
covra, cuerva, cuervo, curva, curvia, and even córdova.
Corva, a feminine noun, is also the dominant term—
overwhelmingly so—in Mexico, according to the ALM
(mapa 753), although the DRAE reports only the mascu-
line variant corvo.
Of course, the other half of our sample did not come
up with the appropriate label corva or a close approxima-
tion. In fact, 110 persons (35%) were unable to provide any
response at all. Map 13-2 demonstrates that there is no
geographical patterning to this lexical loss.
Intermediate between a knowledge of the term and
the inability to respond was a strategy to identify the body
part with some reference to rodilla ‘knee’ or canilla ‘shin,’
for example, atrás de la rodilla ‘behind the knee,’ much like
an English speaker referring to that area as back of the knee.
Nineteen persons (8%) selected this strategy to fill a lexical
gap. Still others simply offered the wrong body part (rodilla,
canilla, zancarrón, codo). These other manifestations of
lexical loss also have nothing to do with geography.
The ‘Back of knee’ variable is strongly associated with
the Spanish proficiency measure, as table 13-17 demon-
strates. While 62% of the fluent Spanish speakers accu-
rately identified this body part, a minuscule 15% of those
judged to have weak Spanish skills were able to do so. The
resort to using a part of the leg to provide a description
accounts for another 20% of the responses of those with
weak Spanish. Nonetheless, the imprecise descriptive
approach accounts for over half of the Spanish responses
they could muster, since nearly two-thirds (65%) of these
speakers could produce no response at all.
Now, gusano for ‘Earthworm,’ cabello or pelo for
‘Mane,’ and atrás de la rodilla for the body part behind
the knee are “correct” responses in some sense. We
can be sure that the speaker will be able to adequately
254
Adequate (4) Strong (5)
52.2 62.1
6.0 6.4
3.0 4.9
38.8 26.6
67 203
communicate about such entities, though perhaps having
to draw on other linguistic and extralinguistic resources
(e.g., pointing, drawing a picture) to do so. Nevertheless,
consistency in the inability to label a subcategory with a
specific term must be seen as another clear indication of
language attrition and the process of language shift.
A phonological correlate of lexical nonspecificity
would appear to be distortions in the form of a word. Let us
illustrate with the responses for ‘Earrings.’ It may be impor-
tant to point out for those familiar with other dialects of
Spanish that the stimulus was a pair of large white hoop
earrings. The most common term, preferred by two-thirds
of the consultants overall (215 of 321, 67%), is the usual
Spanish label aretes. The 2 minor variants are zarcillos (47
preferences, 15%) and arracadas (33 preferences, 10%). Map
13-3 reveals that aretes and arracadas are distributed with-
out any pattern. But zarcillos is decisively a characteris-
tic of the Traditional Spanish of the rural north. Neither
L. Trujillo (1983) nor Cobos lists this ‘Earrings’ variant,
though Cobos lists zarcillos (1983) and zarcíos (2003) as
a flowering plant. Alvar (2000, 208) and Pedrero (2002,
53–54) document 4 mentions in the NMCOSS region as well
as 3 in Texas. Zarcillos for ‘Earrings’ is also quite common
in the traditionally less accessible areas of Colombia, the
southern and eastern Andes (ALEC vol. 4, mapa 36).
Table 13-18 displays the ‘Earrings’ responses accord-
ing to evaluated proficiency in Spanish. In comparison to
those with strong Spanish skills, those with weak skills
show less preference for each of the Spanish words except
for the traditional zarcillos. The decline in Spanish vocab-
ulary is offset by a corresponding increase in the English
response and in no response at all among those having
more limited Spanish.
We combine in this table as “Distorted Spanish
response” the 12 terms offered that are distortions of the
usual forms. Examples of these distortions are aldaretes,
arracatas, arrajadas, arrecadas, eretes, and oretes, each of
which occurred just 1 time. Notice that the distortions that
chapter thirteen
 13-2. ‘Back of knee’

The Long Goodbye 255

 13-3. ‘Earrings’

256 chapter thirteen

 Table 13-18. Responses for ‘Earrings’ by Spanish proficiency (percentages)
Weak (1–3) Adequate (4) Strong (5)
aretes 51.0 67.6 70.9
zarcillos 13.7 12.7 15.6
arracadas 5.9 11.3 11.1
Distorted Spanish
11.8 7.0 1.0
response
earrings 7.8 0.0 1.0
Other response 0.0 1.4 0.5
No response 9.8 0.0 0.0
N 51 71 199

Table 13-19. Responses for ‘Quiero que’ completion by Spanish proficiency (percentages)
Weak (1–3) Adequate (4) Strong (5)
Subjunctive 53.5 98.3 97.2
Indicative 46.5 1.7 2.8
N 43 58 181

occur in these examples involve consonants and vowels of
unstressed syllables, that is, phonological units that are
less salient in perception and therefore more easily misin-
terpreted under conditions of reduced exposure and use.
It is unsurprising, therefore, to find that the distortions
become more frequent with weaker Spanish proficiency
(up to 12% of the responses of the Weak group in table
13-18). They also become more frequent from one genera-
tion to the next (1% of the responses of the Older group to
8% of the Younger group), but these distortions show no
association with the English acquisition variable.
Such idiosyncratic phonological distortions of conso-
nants and atonic vowels occur repeatedly in association
with loss in our data, as we’ll clarify further in chapter
15. To show one example, the usual word for ‘Nurse’ in
New Mexican is nodriza, but we encountered numerous
distortions (e.g., nodricia, nordiza, novriza). With regard
to generation, for example, the aberrant forms accounted
for 23% of the responses of the Younger group, 16% of
the responses of the Middle group, and just 2% of the
responses of the Older group.
Phonological distortions occur especially—and
unsurprisingly—in longer words of four or more sylla-
bles. For example, among those with low Spanish fluency
we find such nonsystematic or nonce deviations as aber-
corque, abrecoque, and albercoco for the target albercoque
‘Apricot’; paguaraja and parayagüe for target paraguas
‘Umbrella’; marcélego, murzágalo, and murciela for target
murciélago ‘Bat’; and petequilla and tapaquilla for target
petaquilla ‘Trunk.’
Finally, the equivalent of lexical nonspecificity
shows up also in grammatical constructions. To illus-
trate, let us examine a single glaring example, the choice
of indicative or subjunctive mood in a particular subor-
dinate clause. In Spanish, the subjunctive is universally
required in a clause subordinate to a verb such as querer
‘want.’ One of the more test-like tasks in the NMCOSS
questionnaire was to complete a sentence along the lines
of Yo quiero que el presidente . . . ‘I want the president
to . . .’ (the ‘Quiero que’ variable). Table 13-19 shows how
the three proficiency groups made the choice of mood
on the verb used to complete this sentence. Virtually all
of the consultants in the two more fluent groups adhered
to the expectation by employing the subjunctive mood,
and the few deviations appeared to be attributable to
confusion about the task. On the other hand, almost half
of those with less than adequate competence utilized
the indicative mood in their responses. (De la Puente-
Schubeck 1991 provides a comprehensive examination of
the loss of the subjunctive across three generations of ten
families of Albuquerque, New Mexico.)
The final stage in the process of language shift, then,
begins with a diminution of control of nuances of the heri-
tage language. Others, especially Carmen Silva-Corvalán

The Long Goodbye 257

 Table 13-20. Responses for ‘Quarter’ by Spanish proficiency (percentages)
Weak (1–3)
dos reales 19.2
peseta 5.8
cuara 30.8
Other response 44.2
N 52
in a long series of publications on Hispanic residents of
East Los Angeles (e.g., 1988; 1994a; 1994b; 2001, 308–27),
have explored in great detail the attrition of Spanish skills
among U.S. bilinguals. Our discussion in this section has
been limited to presenting more straightforward exam-
ples of simplification and loss, and these examples clearly
demonstrate how many speakers of New Mexican Spanish
are exhibiting diminished control of the language in
vocabulary, phonology, and grammatical structure.
Disproportionate Impact of
Loss in Traditional Spanish
We saw in the previous chapter that there is a generational
trend of change that favors Anglicisms and Mexican and
standard Spanish forms at the expense of forms that are
typical of the Traditional Spanish dialect. The same trend
toward declining use of nonstandard and Traditional
Spanish terms occurs with the attrition of Spanish ability
(though we do occasionally find counterexamples such as
the relative maintenance of zarcillos for ‘Earrings’ as seen
in table 13-18).
For example, as we’ve seen in map 10-7, the 3 usual
terms for the coin ‘Quarter’ in New Mexican Spanish
are the Traditional Spanish form dos reales, the Border
Spanish form peseta, and the Anglicism cuara. Table 13-20
indicates that among those having strong proficiency in
Spanish, 44% prefer the Traditional Spanish term and
only 14% the Anglicism. With the weakening of Spanish
skills the situation reverses; dos reales falls to just 19%
preference and cuara rises to 31%.
The usual term for the color ‘Red’ in New Mexican
Spanish is colorado, the long established colloquial form
reflected in the name of the state, a couple of rivers, and
numerous other topographical features of the South-
west. Two-thirds of our consultants (229 of 343, 67%)
selected this label. Another 30% (108 persons) chose
to use rojo, which happens to be the standard Spanish
term always used in textbooks. No geographical dialect
258
Adequate (4) Strong (5)
31.4 43.9
12.9 19.5
28.6 14.1
27.1 22.4
70 205
patterning is apparent in the preference for the 2 labels
(see map 13-4).
Table 13-21 displays the words chosen for the color
‘Red’ and their associations with the age of acquisition
of English. Among the consultants who did not learn
English until age seven or later, over 80% identified the
color as colorado. For the next two groups there was
a reduction to 70% and 63% in the preference for colo-
rado, and those who grew up with English as their first
language offered that form less than half the time. The
opposite trend occurs with rojo. Nearly half of those who
acquired English early gave rojo as their preferred choice
but just 15% of the late English learners did so.
Table 13-22 shows similar results for a morphologi-
cal variable, the third person singular form of ver in the
preterit, that is, the variable ‘I saw.’ Nearly 60% of the late
English learners offered the archaic variant vido even
though its use is quite stigmatized. In contrast, almost
three-quarters of the early English learners preferred the
standard vio.
We would expect early acquisition of English to favor
English influence, but why should it favor Mexican or
standard Spanish influence? The results are due in part
to the fact that the acquisition variable is confounded
with the age variable. That is, those who learn English
early tend to be younger while the late learners tend to
be older. In turn, the age variable is negatively associ-
ated with education and the formal study of Spanish (as
we’ll explore in the next chapter). The younger NMCOSS
consultants tend to be more highly educated in general
and to have more exposure to classroom Spanish. Thus,
the influence of English as well as the influence of stan-
dard and Mexican Spanish are apt to be most apparent in
the speech of the Younger generation.
However, the Pearson correlations of -.35 for English
acquisition and education and -.28 for English acquisition
and Spanish study, while attaining high statistical signifi-
cance, are not terribly strong correlations. The acquisi-
tion variable proves to be somewhat independent of these
chapter thirteen
 13-4. ‘Red’

The Long Goodbye 259

 Table 13-21. Responses for ‘Red’ by Age acquired English (percentages)
(Co-)First language Before age 6 At age 6 After age 6
colorado 49.2 62.7 70.3 81.5
rojo 47.5 37.3 28.4 14.8
Other response 3.4 0.0 1.3 3.7
N 59 51 155 54

Table 13-22. Responses for ‘I saw’ by Age acquired English (percentages)

(Co-)First language Before age 6 At age 6 After age 6
vido 26.9 28.3 41.4 57.4
vio 71.2 69.6 57.9 40.4
Other response 1.9 2.2 0.7 2.1
N 52 46 145 47

other social variables. Early acquisition of English typi-
cally means being raised in an English-speaking home
and thereby having less exposure to Spanish, at least in
the home. Perhaps these more Anglophone consultants
further develop their Spanish skills outside the home. If
in the community, it is increasingly likely to be Mexican
Spanish or standard Spanish for that is what is now
mostly heard on the streets, at the malls, in theaters. And
if in the classroom, it will certainly be standard Spanish.
Consequently, the lapse in intergenerational transmission
of Spanish in the home and the diminution of Spanish
fluency facilitates the intrusion of Border Spanish.
Cumulatively, the varied findings explored in this
chapter point to a high degree of functional reduction of
Spanish vis-à-vis English and imperfect learning of the
ethnic mother tongue. The loss of a nonstandard dialect can
be no surprise given such a high level of performance error.
This performance problem is not just dialect shift away
from the Traditional Spanish norm, however. It is the symp-
tom of a terminal disease. Continued reduction of profi-
ciency in the ethnic heritage language is sure to culminate
in the death of the Traditional Spanish dialect. And in the
death of the Spanish language in general for many persons
of Hispanic heritage in the NMCOSS region.
To witness such loss is devastating to those of us who
treasure this dialect. Interviewer Ysaura Bernal-Enríquez
laments:
(13-5) There were two interviews that made me
want to cry. One was of a man in his seventies
who described his experience of being
punished in school for speaking Spanish.
Even though he was from the eldest group of
interviewees, he agonized in trying to recall
even some of the most basic words in Spanish.
The other was of a woman in her late eighties
who was so insecure about her variety of
Spanish that she would not tell me her variant
unless I could show it to her on my list or
could tell her it was in a dictionary such as
Rubén Cobos’s A dictionary of New Mexico
and southern Colorado Spanish.

260 chapter thirteen

 Chap ter 14
Expanding Horizons
The Impact of Standard Spanish
Introduction
One of the principal trends illustrated in chapter 12 is the
kind of language change that is usually called “change
from below,” change that is inspired by the speech of the
common people, the ordinary colloquial language of our
friends and neighbors. Thus, we saw the expansion of
nonstandard lexical items such as the regional ganso for
‘Turkey,’ the Anglicism sute for ‘Suit,’ and the Mexican
nieve for ‘Ice cream.’ Such change from below is particu-
larly apparent in the grammatical system, as we saw in
the expansion of such colloquial forms as hamos and la
clima. This kind of language change is typically “below
the level of social awareness” (Labov 1972, 178), but it can
have a special attraction. If we have moved away, it may
remind us of home, of our parents and grandparents, of
our extended family. And, if we’re old enough, it may
remind us of “the good old days.”
In this chapter, however, we probe a very distinct kind
of change, “change from above,” change inspired by the
speech of the educated or cultured, the kind of language
that most people will readily evaluate in a positive way. It
is language that has an attraction that is very distinct from
that of colloquial speech. It is said to have “overt” prestige,
because the community members will generally label it
as “good” and “proper.” A colloquial variety of Spanish
or English may have an attraction that is in some ways
equally strong or much stronger, but whatever prestige it
has is “covert.” Perhaps we kind of like it, feel comfortable
around it, feel at home with it, but it might not normally be
called “good” Spanish or “good” English.
Most people feel it’s easy to identify “good” speech
and are quite content to label that “good” way of talk-
ing as standard. However, it is astonishingly difficult to
objectively define what a community of people or even
what a single individual considers to be “good” English
or “good” Spanish. The identification of good speech is
usually made in a negative fashion. People identify what
is not good: “He doesn’t speak English properly.” “Their
Spanish is really ignorant.”
Moreover, whatever the standard language is, it is
not a single dialect that can be readily pinpointed. It is
highly variable. Standard American English is very differ-
ent from standard British English. Standard Castilian
Spanish is very different from standard Mexican Spanish.
Standard Boston English is very different from standard
261
Philadelphia English. And Bostonians from different
parts of the city will differ significantly in identifying the
“best” kind of English.
In Spanish, the variety perceived to be good is often
called the norma culta. This notion of the “cultivated
norm” reveals a distinguishing characteristic of a stan-
dard variety. The standard language tends to be what the
cultured, educated classes consider normal. It holds sway
wherever the cultured, educated people hold sway—for
example, in the schools, in the courts, in the banks. It is
therefore associated with a special kind of success in life,
economic success in particular. And it is therefore to be
emulated when seeking that kind of success.
The Spanish speakers of our survey region are bilin-
guals who are usually dominant in English and tend to
have a far stronger awareness of what is considered good
English than of what is considered good Spanish. That is
a natural result of 150 years of political detachment from
world Spanish and nearly a century of compulsory educa-
tion in English. The ambiguities of the linguistic and
social situation have led to the kinds of myths discussed
in chapter 2. Perceptions of the local Spanish are typi-
cally defined by the assessments of outsiders educated in
Spanish, in whose view it seems quaint, archaic, rustic,
folksy. The rampant influence of English is believed to be
really bad. One thing that becomes clear to most speakers
of New Mexican Spanish is that this variety is certainly
not the norma culta.
But finding out what is the norma culta is not so easy.
Nevertheless, a lot of speakers of New Mexican Spanish
manage to gain some idea of what standard Spanish
might be (as Kravitz 1985 has documented for a Hispanic
barrio of Albuquerque). And they try to make use of that
knowledge in circumstances where the standard might
be considered appropriate—for instance, when plopped
down before a tape recorder for an interview! Thus, we
can certainly expect some manifestations of that knowl-
edge to show up in the NMCOSS data.
Our consultants may have gained familiarity with
standard Spanish in two principal ways: through expo-
sure to written Spanish, independently or in the class-
room, and through experience with speakers of the
standard variety, in face-to-face interactions or via radio
and television. In this chapter, we examine just two social
variables that tap into those kinds of engagement with
standard Spanish.
One of these social variables is the number of years
of education that the individual has completed. We
cannot, of course, expect each additional year of educa-
tion to show a one-to-one correlation with a specific level
262
of awareness of standard Spanish. But we can expect
tendencies to show up because education is one of the
most powerful indicators (along with occupation and
income, see Labov 2001, 60) of socioeconomic status.
Although all education for our consultants was typically
in English, persons with higher levels of education tend
to have broader contacts in the world, including in the
Spanish-speaking world.
For analysis of the variable for years of education,
we divided the consultants into five groups of roughly
comparable size: (1) persons who completed fewer than
nine years of education, (2) those who completed nine to
eleven years of high school, (3) high school graduates, (4)
those who attended college but did not complete a four-
year degree, and (5) college graduates, some of whom
have more advanced degrees. For example, as suggested
previously, the use of the standard Spanish label pavo for
‘Turkey’ is associated with this education variable. Its
frequency of mention increases with each higher level of
education. Pavo was the choice of none from the lowest
educational group, of only 6% of those in the two groups
with some high school education, of 8% of the group with
college experience, and of a hefty 18% of those having a
college diploma.
The second social variable that we can expect to be
associated with awareness of standard Spanish is how
much experience in a Spanish classroom formed a part
of that education. To explore the impact of classroom
Spanish, we divide the NMCOSS consultants into four
groups according to the amount of Spanish coursework
they reported, ranging from no formal study at all to
three or more courses (where a course is a year at the
school level and a semester at the college level). For exam-
ple, pavo was the term of preference for just 1 of the 120
persons who had no formal Spanish, but that label was
offered by 6% of those with one Spanish course, 10% of
those with two Spanish courses, and 13% of those with
three or more courses.
Although pavo for ‘Turkey’ has been familiar to
speakers of New Mexican Spanish for a long time, it does
not seem to evidence a change in progress. Recall that
it accounted for 8% of the responses in Kiddle’s study
(1951–52) from the 1930s, and it still represents only 7% of
our cases in the 1990s. This is a case of a standard Spanish
lexical form that some speakers become acquainted with
but that appears not to be penetrating deeply into New
Mexican Spanish.
A more vibrant illustration is the identification of
the color ‘Red’ using the standard variant rojo, which
was the preferred choice of nearly a third (31%) of the
chapter fourteen
 Table 14-1. Responses for ‘Red’ by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11 12 13–15 16 or more
colorado 88.1 84.0 65.9 45.3 50.7
rojo 9.0 12.0 31.7 53.1 47.8
Other or No response 3.0 4.0 2.4 1.6 1.5
N 67 50 82 64 67

Table 14-2. Responses for ‘Red’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)

No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
colorado 84.4 71.0 49.2 45.8
rojo 13.1 25.8 50.8 54.2
Other or No response 2.5 3.2 0.0 0.0
N 122 62 59 72

Formal Study of Spanish

NMCOSS consultants. Map 13-4 in the previous chap-
ter shows that neither of the two terms for ‘Red’ displays
a clear geographical distribution. The two-thirds of the
consultants who prefer the term colorado are scattered all
over the territory. Those who prefer rojo are also spread
randomly throughout the region. As usual, however, when
spatial distributions are unrevealing for a variable item,
social correlations tend to surface with greater strength.
Rojo, the standard Spanish term used widely across the
Spanish-speaking world, shows strong associations with
both the education and the Spanish study variables.
Table 14-1 displays the preferences for the terms for
‘Red’ according to years of education. We see that fewer
than 1 in 10 of those who completed no more than eight
years of formal education offer the standard rojo. At the
opposite extreme of education, among those who have
gone to college, rojo becomes as highly preferred as the
traditional colorado.
Table 14-2 displays the ‘Red’ results according to
formal courses in Spanish. As happens with education
as a variable, an increase in the formal study of Spanish
coincides with a marked increase in the use of the stan-
dard Spanish word. Indeed, rojo becomes the majority
choice among those who have taken just two or more
courses in Spanish.
Both formal study of Spanish and education in general,
then, are associated with the emergence of standard Spanish
vocabulary in the NMCOSS region. The following sections
explore each of these social variables separately.
Exposure to standard Spanish as presented in school
and college Spanish classes clearly affected the language
behavior of some of our consultants. Spanish teachers, by
virtue of their training, have become educated Spanish
speakers, and many of them—even native speakers of
New Mexican Spanish—tend to feel it is their obligation
to correct the “errors” they perceive in the Spanish of their
Hispanic students. In Spanish classes today, especially at
the college level but also in high school courses, there is
an emphasis on accepting and nourishing the Spanish
skills that the heritage speaker brings to the classroom.
But this has not always been the case, as illustrated by the
following comments of a forty-eight-year-old man from
Albuquerque (interview 21):
(14-1) Yo nunca tuve vergüenza como hablo.
Nunca. ‘Ora otra gente tuvo problema con
la idioma. . . . Pus, estaba un maestro allí en
Lincoln, ¿no? cuando ya (estaba?) en el eighth
grade. Y siempre los [=nos] pescaba allí en
el study hall. . . . Y siempre los abajaba, los
avergonzaba, ¿no? porque no hablábamos ‘1
español como libro. Es que estaba enseñando
Spanish one o no sé qué. ‘I have never been
ashamed of how I talk. Never. Now other people
had a problem with my language. . . . Well,
there was a teacher there in Lincoln [Middle
School], you see, when I was in the eighth grade.
And he would always catch us there in study

Expanding Horizons 263

 Table 14-3. Responses for ‘Teacher’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
No courses 1 course
maestro 44.3
maistro 7.4
mestro 42.6
profesor 5.7
Other response 0.0
N 122
hall. . . . And he would always put us down,
he’d try to shame us, you see, because we didn’t
speak Spanish like in the books. It’s that he was
teaching Spanish-1 or something of the sort.’
The formal study of Spanish may have consider-
able impact on one’s native dialect, but the potential
effect is limited in two ways. First, some students are
more susceptible than others to the influence of teach-
ers and the academic world. The teacher’s admonitions
appear to have had little effect on the Albuquerque man
just quoted. Notice too in table 14-2 that barely half of
those who had three or more Spanish courses adopted
the more universal rojo for ‘Red’; 46% continue to prefer
the colloquial colorado.
Second, the effect is constrained by what is presented
and emphasized in the Spanish classroom. Things and
activities within the school domain are, of course, partic-
ularly emphasized. Consider, for example, the pronuncia-
tion of the word for ‘Teacher’ presented in table 14-3. To
pronounce maestro with stress on the e, typically with the
first two vowels in separate syllables, is characteristic of
careful standard Spanish. The colloquial norm, common
throughout the Spanish-speaking world, is to merge
these two vowels into a single syllable as a diphthong
with stress on the a, thus maistro. The popular solution in
New Mexican Spanish (and in other dialects) is reduction
to just the second vowel, mestro. (Jenkins 1999 and Alba
2005 provide detailed and authoritative analyses of the
treatment of adjacent vowels in New Mexican Spanish.)
As it happens, the standard variant is the preferred
variant in New Mexican Spanish, the choice of 57% of
our 340 consultants (193 first choices). Mestro comes in
second with barely half as many preferences (30%, 103
first choices). Least common in New Mexican Spanish
are the widespread colloquial form maistro (24 responses,
7%) and the suprastandard profesor (20 responses, 6%).
Map 14-1 reveals that the mestro variant is particularly
264
2 courses 3 or more courses
55.7 62.7 71.8
11.5 5.1 2.8
26.2 25.4 16.9
6.6 6.8 7.0
0.0 0.0 1.4
61 59 71
characteristic of the Traditional Spanish area while the
other 3 variants show no geographical clustering.
Table 14-3 makes clear that the standard pronuncia-
tion is widely accessible in the community, being volun-
teered by 44% of those who never set foot in a Spanish
classroom. But each increase in classroom exposure
increases the frequency of maestro, rising to 72% among
those having three or more courses in Spanish. The 2
colloquial forms tend to display a corresponding decrease
in frequency.
Where the classroom context is appropriate for
the introduction of a particular lexical item, one of the
common consequences is the suppression of Anglicisms.
An excellent example is the label for the important
December holiday that is invariably discussed in the
classroom, ‘Christmas’ (briefly mentioned in chapter 10).
By far the most common label in New Mexican Spanish
is the Anglicism Crismes with 195 preferences (63%).
There were in addition 17 responses of the slightly differ-
ent Crismas and 4 cases of unassimilated Christmas. It
surprises us that Alvar (2000, 241) finds no instances of
the Anglicism in the other Southwest states. In contrast,
only 30% of our consultants (93 persons) offered the stan-
dard Spanish term Navidad.
Map 14-2 shows that the Crismes variant occurs
across the NMCOSS territory. The Crismas variant with
/a/ and Navidad occur sporadically throughout the region,
but both are noticeably more prominent in the Border
Spanish areas. The relative prominence of Navidad in
Border Spanish represents the influence of Mexican
Spanish, but its broader distribution must be attributable
to social factors. The change-from-above trend to replace
Anglicisms is additive when the standard variant happens
also to be the norm in Mexico, as is the case with Navidad.
This makes the standardization pressure even more potent
and becomes in effect a Mexicanization process.
And that standardization pressure for appropriately
labeling the Christmas holiday is clearly evident in the
chapter fourteen
 14-1. ‘Teacher’

Expanding Horizons 265

 14-2. ‘Christmas’

266 chapter fourteen

 Table 14-4. Responses for ‘Christmas’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
Crismes, Crismas 81.4 70.9 61.5 57.4
Navidad 17.7 23.6 38.5 41.2
English or Other response 0.9 5.5 0.0 1.5
N 113 55 52 68

Table 14-5. Responses for ‘Balloon’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)

No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
balún and variants 73.0 68.4 62.5 43.1
balloon 11.3 14.0 10.7 11.1
globo 11.3 12.3 23.2 40.3
Other or No response 4.3 5.3 3.4 5.6
N 115 57 56 72

data for classroom exposure to Spanish (see table 14-4).
The Anglicism Crismes is the term of preference of 81%
of those having no formal instruction in Spanish, but its
preferential status declines with each additional Spanish
course, being progressively replaced by the standard
Spanish Navidad.
Another Anglicism that shows the impact of stan-
dardization is the word for the spherical inflated toy of
parties and carnivals, ‘Balloon.’ The typical speaker of
New Mexican Spanish knows no other label for ‘Balloon’
than the English word, usually fully integrated as balún
(occasionally but rarely bolún, belún, or balón). This vari-
able is treated in greater detail in the following chap-
ter (see map 15-3). Here we deal only with the impact of
formal Spanish study. Table 14-5 shows how forcefully
the standard globo displaces the integrated Anglicism, a
displacement of almost 30 percentage points across the
four categories of Spanish instruction. Formal study of
Spanish seems to have no effect, however, on the willing-
ness to confess that the English word balloon is the only
label known (a point to which we return later).
A very similar case is the label for the measuring
device ‘Ruler,’ pictured in our protocol as the twelve-
inch wooden variety typically used in schools. Fully 74%
of the responses for this variable are Anglicisms—either
completely integrated as rula or some such variant or as
the nonintegrated rule or ruler. By far the most common
form of this borrowing is rula, offered by 210 of the 330
respondents (64%). Map 14-3 shows that rula covers every
inch of the region. The standard Spanish variant regla was
the preference of just 46 persons (14%) and shows up most
prominently, as we would expect, in the southern part
of the region closest to the Mexican border. But in this
case, too, there are scattered occurrences elsewhere and
we find that sociological factors again play an important
role. We have included on the map a minor form, cuadra,
which achieved 11 preferences (2 being the metathesized
cuarda) and which shows up only in rural parts of the
Traditional Spanish territory. Cuadra in this area gener-
ally refers to the carpenter’s ‘square’ (which may also be
used for measuring). Perhaps the meaning of cuadra
has been extended to cover a common ruler. Or perhaps
these 11 persons grasped at a related term to avoid using
an Anglicism.
As with ‘Balloon,’ the most significant social correla-
tion appears to be the formal study of Spanish: more study
of Spanish is associated with more use of the standard
variant and less use of the Anglicism (see table 14-6). Rula
falls from 74% among those who never studied Spanish
to only 41% of those with the most exposure to Spanish
in the classroom. Meanwhile, standard regla increases
from 6% to 32%. The seemingly inexplicable increase in
the ruler variant will be considered later.
Another Anglicism faces a different dilemma: which
Anglicism is better? The options for ‘Sweater’ discussed
in chapter 10 illustrate the dilemma. Do I use the variant
based on spoken English, suera, or the one based on writ-
ten English, suéter? Or should I just use the English label
sweater? The random distribution of the 3 variants in our
earlier map 10-2 suggests that in making that decision,

Expanding Horizons 267

 14-3. ‘Ruler’

268 chapter fourteen

 Table 14-6. Responses for ‘Ruler’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
rula 73.9 71.7 62.5 40.8
ruler 2.6 8.3 10.7 12.7
regla 6.1 5.0 14.3 32.4
Other or No response 17.4 15.0 12.5 14.1
N 115 60 56 71

Table 14-7. Responses for ‘Sweater’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)

No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
suera 91.2 86.9 77.2 56.9
suéter 5.3 9.8 17.5 34.7
sweater 2.7 1.6 3.5 6.9
Other or No response 0.9 1.6 1.8 1.4
N 113 61 57 72

my life experiences (social factors) have more influence
on the choice than where I’m from.
Indeed they do. For example, females, younger
persons, those who learned English at an early age, those
with higher income, and especially the more highly
educated show a preference for the form suéter. But the
strongest social correlation is with the formal study of
Spanish. Table 14-7 shows that 91% of those having no class-
room study of Spanish prefer suera and that the propor-
tion drops with each course of formal study, falling to
57% among those who completed three or more Spanish
courses. At the same time, the standard suéter shows a
substantial increase with more formal study of Spanish.
As we just observed for ‘Balloon’ and ‘Ruler,’ although
the integrated Anglicism shows a negative association with
the formal study of Spanish, the unassimilated English
form (balloon, ruler, sweater) fails to do so. In fact, the
frequencies of ruler and sweater actually increase with
more study of Spanish. Why should harkening to the stark
English word maintain or increase its appeal with greater
exposure to formal Spanish in the classroom? We can only
speculate on the reason. Perhaps those who tend to take
extended Spanish in high school or college are those who
grow up with weaker skills in Spanish in the first place.
Maybe they didn’t get rula at home, and if they did, the
experience in the classroom may have made them aware
that the form rula is stigmatized. And if they got regla in
the classroom, it didn’t stick. So the English word becomes
the only option.
Sometimes we find that the formal study of Spanish has
a stronger negative impact on a well-established Traditional
Spanish form than on the corresponding Anglicism. Map
12-7 shows that each of the 3 major terms for ‘Ice cream’ has
a fairly clear geographical distribution: the leche nevada
variant and the various forms of the Anglicism are char-
acteristic of Traditional Spanish while the nieve of popular
Mexican speech is typical of Border Spanish. But another
label of fairly high frequency, the standard Spanish helado,
displays no geographical clustering.
Formal study of Spanish is one of the social variables
(along with education) that accounts for the occurrence
of this last form; see table 14-8. While only 3.5% of the
consultants who had never studied Spanish selected the
helado label, 24% of those claiming three or more Spanish
courses did so. The explanatory effect is not huge. After
all, 3 out of 4 of those in the highest formal Spanish
group failed to offer the standard label. But it is evident
that helado is a recently emerging form in New Mexican
Spanish and that its emergence is attributable in great
measure to classroom experience with Spanish.
But what is the effect of formal study of Spanish
on the other labels for the frozen dairy sweet? Perhaps
because of the recency of the intrusion of helado, the
trends are not sharply defined. With regard to the
Traditional Spanish terms, there is a sharp drop-off of
leche nevada among those having three or more years of
Spanish. We also see a modest decline in the Anglicism
with more study of Spanish. On the other hand, there is

Expanding Horizons 269

 Table 14-8. Responses for ‘Ice cream’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
leche nevada 25.4 18.0 23.7 6.9
nieve 21.1 21.3 28.8 30.6
ice cream and variants 42.1 42.6 30.5 33.3
helado and variants 3.5 9.8 10.2 23.6
Other or No response 7.9 8.2 6.8 5.6
N 114 61 59 72

Table 14-9. Responses for ‘Dress’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)

No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
túnico 62.6 55.7 56.1 45.8
vistido 7.8 3.3 5.3 1.4
vestido 27.0 34.4 36.8 48.6
Other or No response 2.6 6.6 1.8 4.2
N 115 61 57 72

a modest rise in use of the Mexican label, nieve, which
may seem a bit unexpected. However, as we pointed out
in chapter 2, Mexican Spanish has an aura of “goodness.”
That is, if the local Spanish is considered “bad” and a local
variant differs from the variant used in Mexico where
people are educated in Spanish, then the Mexican variant
must be “good.” Such linguistic insecurity is particularly
common among language teachers, such as the teacher
mentioned in example 14-1. Helado versus nieve, then,
should really be considered a competition between two
different standards.
Table 14-9 illustrates the impact of a standard Spanish
form on not just 1 but 2 marked Traditional Spanish vari-
ants. The standard term for a woman’s ‘Dress’ is vestido.
We see in the table that its frequency rises from barely a
quarter of those with no formal Spanish to nearly a half
of those who enjoyed three or more Spanish courses. In
Traditional Spanish, however, the usual term for ‘Dress’
is túnico (see earlier map 5-3). As expected, the preference
for this term declines with expanded exposure to class-
room Spanish, although nearly half of the highest formal
Spanish group continues to prefer the túnico label.
The increase in the use of vestido is particularly
remarkable due to the fact that in Traditional Spanish this
term typically has a sharply divergent meaning, referring
not to an article of women’s clothing, but to a man’s ‘Suit’
(see map 10-14). This contrast in meaning is not a terribly
surprising development given that vestido is historically
the past participle of the verb vestir ‘to dress’ and thus
means simply ‘dressed’; the evolution of a meaning for
clothing associated with one gender could understand-
ably go either way and has done so in different regions.
But the widely accepted standard is the use of vestido
for ‘Dress.’ Consequently, formal study of Spanish has a
concomitant impact on the label for a man’s ‘Suit,’ where
the preference for a vestido form declines from 56% of
those with no experience in the classroom to 29% of those
who had one or more Spanish courses.
Adding to the trouble, moreover, is the fact that in
Traditional Spanish vestido is commonly realized as
vistido, a shibboleth of nonstandard speech. The importa-
tion of the standard Spanish form, then, not only under-
mines the traditional term for ‘Dress’ but also promotes
a change in meaning as well as pronunciation of another
traditional term.
Similar trends toward standardization as a result of
experience with formal Spanish in the classroom show up
with many other lexical variables. A sampling is provided
in table 14-10. For example, the standard afeitarse ‘Shave’
(competing with hacerse la barba, rasurarse, and resurarse)
was proffered by no one having fewer than two Spanish
courses but by 13% of those having more than two courses.
Desayuno as the label for the morning meal ‘Breakfast’
increases from 6% among those who never studied Spanish
to 20% among those who had at least three Spanish courses,
supplanting the retained almuerzo that now typically

270 chapter fourteen

Table 14-10. Selected standard lexical responses by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
cerdo, puerco (vs. marrano, cochino) ‘Pig’ 0.0 4.8 5.1 9.9
afeitarse (vs. varied) ‘Shave’ 0.0 0.0 1.7 12.7
mono (vs. chango) ‘Monkey’ 2.5 1.6 3.4 11.1
cuello (vs. pescuezo) ‘Neck’ 2.6 3.3 5.1 15.9
lata (vs. bote, jarro) ‘Tin can’ 3.5 4.9 12.1 17.4
alumno (vs. varied) ‘Student’ 3.6 6.6 5.4 18.3
lodo (vs. zoquete) ‘Mud’ 4.3 5.0 11.9 20.0
maleta (vs. velís) ‘Suitcase’ 4.5 4.9 5.3 12.5
frenos (vs. brecas, maneas) ‘Brakes’ 4.6 6.9 12.7 20.9
autobús (vs. bos, etc.) ‘Bus’ 6.0 11.5 8.9 25.0
desayuno (vs. almuerzo) ‘Breakfast’ 6.1 15.3 14.3 20.3
lago (vs. laguna) ‘Lake’ 6.8 22.0 20.7 39.4
murciélago (vs. varied) ‘Bat’ 7.5 6.3 18.6 27.8
cascada (vs. varied) ‘Waterfall’ 7.8 9.8 10.3 21.4
tobillo (vs. varied) ‘Ankle’ 8.1 12.7 26.3 23.9
enfermera (vs. nodriza) ‘Nurse’ 10.5 11.7 19.3 25.4
paraguas (vs. varied) ‘Umbrella’ 14.2 20.0 28.1 45.8
tocino (vs. jamón) ‘Bacon’ 14.0 14.8 21.7 28.6
regalo (vs. presente, varied) ‘Present’ 16.9 18.6 34.5 39.4
plátano (vs. banana) ‘Banana’ 16.9 24.6 37.9 40.3
gris (vs. pardo, plomo) ‘Gray’ 18.8 32.3 37.5 51.4
piel (vs. cuero) ‘Skin’ (of human) 19.1 31.0 29.3 66.2
dentista (vs. dientista) ‘Dentist’ 20.2 31.7 30.4 50.7
falda (vs. nagua(s)) ‘Skirt’ 22.5 34.4 28.1 50.7
estampilla (vs. estampa) ‘Stamp’ 22.6 15.0 24.1 38.0
o(b)scuro (vs. escuro) ‘Darkness’ 32.8 38.3 37.9 54.9
avión (vs. varied) ‘Airplane’ 31.4 39.3 41.1 47.2
bicicleta (vs. varied) ‘Bicycle’ 31.6 51.7 38.6 73.2
teléfono (vs. telefón) ‘Telephone’ 32.5 39.3 65.5 57.1
fresa (vs. mora, varied) ‘Strawberry’ 33.1 29.5 45.6 50.0
espalda (vs. espinazo) ‘Back’ 40.9 41.4 44.1 58.0
taza (vs. copa) ‘Cup’ 40.2 47.5 47.4 62.5
estómago (vs. estógamo) ‘Stomach’ 51.3 56.9 58.9 77.5
blusa (vs. cuerpo) ‘Blouse’ 52.2 54.1 78.6 66.2
humo (vs. jumo) ‘Smoke’ 63.0 66.1 74.6 72.5

Expanding Horizons 271

 Table 14-11. Selected standard grammatical responses by
Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
el idioma (vs. la idioma) ‘Language’ 8.3 17.5 21.8 35.2
papás (vs. papases) ‘Fathers’ 27.3 39.3 38.5 56.3
mamás (vs. mamases) ‘Mothers’ 27.8 43.1 44.2 62.0
vi (vs. vide) ‘I saw’ 30.9 55.4 46.3 72.9
el calor (vs. la calor) ‘Heat’ 35.5 37.3 41.5 52.1
trajo (vs. trujo) ‘He brought’ 38.9 42.9 50.0 54.9
hemos (vs. hamos) ‘We have’ 41.0 58.5 70.4 70.1
vio (vs. vido) ‘He saw’ 43.5 66.1 65.5 72.9
he (vs. ha) ‘I have’ 45.8 47.4 54.7 62.9

refers to the lunch meal in standard Spanish. The Standard
pronunciation dentista ‘Dentist’ (as opposed to the diph-
thongized dientista that is formally closer to diente ‘tooth’)
increases from 20% to 51% while the nonmetathesized
estómago ‘Stomach’ (as opposed to metathesized estógamo)
increases from 51% to 78%.
The number of grammatical variables is far smaller
than the number of lexical variables, but Spanish teachers
are prone to give special attention to grammatical expla-
nations. We may therefore anticipate that formal study
of Spanish will have an impact on grammatical struc-
tures that are perceived to be nonstandard. The forms
presented in table 14-11 exemplify this impact, which
is often substantial. For example, the preference for vi
(versus the archaic vide) as the first person singular pret-
erit form of ver—the ‘I saw’ variable—rises from 31% to
73%, an increase of 42 percentage points. The standard
replacements trajo ‘He brought’ and vio ‘He saw’ for 2
other archaic and stigmatized preterit forms also gener-
ally increase for formal Spanish, though not so dramati-
cally. Preferences for the standard plurals for papá and
mamá expand significantly, as do preferences for the
standard masculine gender assignments for idioma and
calor and for the standard first person present tense forms
of haber (he and hemos).
But as we all know, an inoculation of learning in the
classroom does not always take. Consider the use of the
subjunctive mood, which proves to be a major hurdle in
learning Spanish as a second language. Fluent Spanish of
any variety requires the subjunctive form of the verb in
a clause following a verb like querer ‘want.’ As explained
with reference to table 13-19 in the previous chapter, near
the end of the interview schedule, NMCOSS consultants
were asked to provide a completion for a sentence like Yo
quiero que el presidente . . . , the ‘Quiero que’ variable. The
results? Fully 96% of the consultants who had never stud-
ied Spanish formally employed the subjunctive but only
82% of those with three or more Spanish courses did so. To
what can we attribute this surprising result? Once again,
perhaps it is those who have suffered a greater degree of
loss of their ancestral language who feel the stronger need
to pursue more Spanish language courses. In similar fash-
ion, the Navajo courses offered at the University of New
Mexico seem to hold a special attraction for Navajos—
and even other Native Americans!—who failed to acquire
a good command of their heritage language at home.
Education in General
Spanish speakers in the United States come under the
influence of the norma culta in places other than in the
Spanish classroom. The standardization process—in many
respects the Mexicanization process—is associated with
greater exposure to the larger Spanish-speaking world in
many other ways. A consistent finding in our data is the
association of standard Spanish variants with number of
years of education in general. Why should that be? Most
of the NMCOSS consultants received all their education
in English (except in the occasional Spanish class). How
could education in English affect their Spanish? A plausible
response is that more education enhances opportunities
for international travel and international acquaintances
and is associated with the higher income that makes such
communication contacts more feasible.

272 chapter fourteen

 Table 14-12. Responses for ‘Bicycle’ by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11
bicicleta 29.3 30.0
Other ‑cicleta, ‑ciqueta forms 62.1 66.0
baica, báicico, etc. 3.4 2.0
bicycle, bike 3.4 2.0
Other or No response 1.7 0.0
N 58 50
As might be expected, formal study of Spanish
and years of education are very highly intercorrelated
(Pearson’s r = .622), and both have an inverse correlation
(but less strong) with age. That is, younger people tend
to have a higher level of education, and those who have
spent more years in the classroom in general tend to have
more classroom experience with Spanish. Nevertheless,
we sometimes find that education in general seems to
make an independent contribution to the use of stan-
dard Spanish forms. In addition, the education variable
uncovers a “hypercorrect” sociolinguistic behavior that
we discuss later.
One of the strongest impacts of the education vari-
able that we have encountered concerns the word for
‘Bicycle.’ Overall, 154 of the 328 respondents (47%)
reported the standard Spanish term bicicleta. Table 14-12
shows that the preference for this term increases from just
29% among the least educated to 70% among the most
highly educated, those with a college degree. Notice in
table 14-10 that the association of the standard term with
formal study of Spanish is about equally strong.
But overall there were nearly as many responses
(149, 45%) that deviated slightly from the standard bici-
cleta. There was a variety of these distortions, as we have
come to expect of four-syllable words. The commonal-
ities among these aberrant variants are (a) consistently
four syllables, (b) -ci- as the second syllable, and (c)
either -cleta or -queta as the final two syllables. But the
first syllable varies widely: baicicleta, bacicleta, becicleta,
blaciqueta, laciqueta, bleciqueta, and several others. After
bicicleta, the second most common single form (with 56
mentions) is baicicleta, which appears to be a blend of the
English and Spanish forms. Yet only 12 persons offered
an integrated Anglicism (báicico, baicico, baique, baica)
and only 5 limited their response to the English bicycle or
bike. There is little geographical patterning among these
variants. The standard variant is dominant in Border
Spanish, but it is also strongly represented everywhere
Expanding Horizons
12 13–15 16 or more
35.1 66.7 70.1
53.2 23.8 25.4
6.5 4.8 1.5
1.3 1.6 0.0
3.9 3.2 3.0
77 63 67
else. The distortions are somewhat more characteristic of
Traditional Spanish.
In the case of a more recent technological devel-
opment, the ‘Telephone,’ the early influence of English
is strongly apparent. Both the English telephone and
the standard Spanish teléfono were created as classical
borrowings utilizing two Greek elements that yield the
literal meaning of ‘distant sound.’ But it was English that
was the dominant language in the NMCOSS region when
telephones were introduced. Consequently, the most
common form in New Mexican Spanish is the integrated
Anglicism telefón, garnering 161 preferences (49%). But
the standard Spanish teléfono is not far behind with 153
preferences (46%).
The stress pattern on telefón merits a brief commen-
tary. English typically has two stresses, one primary
and one secondary, on words of three or more syllables.
Telephone, for example, has primary stress on the first
syllable and secondary stress on the final syllable, thus
télephòne. The usual integration of such forms into Spanish
is to place the stress on the last emphasized syllable, thus
telefón. This adaptation is so typical that it also shows up
in the dialect called Chicano English with such pronun-
ciations as elevátor for standard English élevàtor. Though
antepenultimate stress (stress on the third from last sylla-
ble) is possible in Spanish and in fact occurs in the stan-
dard teléfono, the fact that not 1 consultant offered télefon
demonstrates the rigor of this pattern of stress adaptation.
On the other side of the coin, English speakers have a
difficult time with stress on some Spanish words. The name
Esteban (sometimes spelled Estevan in our area) is stressed
on the second syllable in Spanish. But even though English
Steven has the stress in the same place, Anglos tend to
pronounce this name Éstebàn—for reasons of the phono-
logical nature of English that are too complex to pursue
here. Or paying really close attention, they might come up
with Èstebán, with primary stress on the final syllable! But
to nail the native Estéban requires real effort. Similarly,
273
 14-4. ‘Telephone’

274 chapter fourteen

 Table 14-13. Responses for ‘Telephone’ by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11 12 13–15 16 or more
telefón 64.5 54.0 49.4 39.1 39.4
telefono 8.1 2.0 6.3 3.1 6.1
teléfono 27.4 42.0 43.0 56.3 54.5
Other response 0.0 2.0 1.3 1.6 0.0
N 62 50 79 64 66

Table 14-14. Responses for ‘Ice cream’ by Years of education (percentages)

0–8 9–11 12 13–15 16 or more
leche nevada 24.1 29.4 22.5 9.7 13.2
nieve 19.0 25.5 26.3 37.1 22.1
ice cream and variants 48.3 31.4 31.3 38.7 38.2
helado and variants 0.0 2.0 13.8 6.5 25.0
Other or No response 8.6 11.8 6.3 8.1 1.5
N 58 51 80 61 68

the English speaker tends to feel compelled to stress Vigil
on the first syllable, and consequently coauthor Vigil has
adapted to introducing himself as Vígil when the circum-
stances seem to require it.
We have charted the distributions of 3 ‘Telephone’
variants on map 14-4. The standard form and the inte-
grated Anglicism are both dispersed across the NMCOSS
region without any strong geographical patterning. The
third variant, telefono, appears to be an alternative way of
integrating the Anglicism, but it has not become widely
accepted, receiving only 17 choices (5%).
The lack of a geographical pattern suggests the exis-
tence of a social pattern, and educational factors seem
to be the important social influence. The association of
standard teléfono with formal study of Spanish is seen in
table 14-10. The association with education in general is
comparably powerful. Table 14-13 shows that the propor-
tion of the standard teléfono response doubles from the
lowest to the highest educated (from 27% to 55%). Since
young people tend to have higher levels of education, we
might assume that the standard label is gaining fast on
the Anglicism. However, our data reveal no association
with the age groups. The Younger generation shows a 49%
preference for teléfono and the Older generation 46%. The
lack of indication of generational change suggests that the
Anglicism will remain a feature of New Mexican Spanish
for some time to come.
Standard Spanish variants expand along with the
number of years of education in general, and, as with the
classroom study of Spanish, a concomitant change is the
displacement not only of Anglicisms like telefón but also
of nonstandard variants in general. The displacement is
apt to be especially strong where the nonstandard vari-
ant is a feature of Traditional Spanish. The labels for ‘Ice
cream’ provide an excellent example.
The results for level of education presented in table
14-14 are very similar to those for formal study of Spanish
in table 14-8, but the increase in the standard helado is
slightly greater. Here we have 3 nonstandard variants and
the standardization trend affects each one differently. As
before, it is only the Traditional Spanish leche nevada that
shows a significant decline in frequency with more years
of education. The Anglicism variants retain their plural-
ity status quite well. And the Mexican Spanish nieve also
maintains its strength.
A similar but much less complicated case involves
the words for the color ‘Gray’ in New Mexican Spanish.
The 3 principal responses—gris, pardo, and plomo—are
displayed on map 14-5. The most frequent response is
pardo, the choice of almost half of the 332 respondents
(159 persons, 48%). As the map indicates, this word
strongly characterizes Traditional Spanish. But it is also
widely used for ‘Gray’ in the Americas, including Mexico
(though this item was unfortunately not included in the
ALM). In contrast to pardo, the variant plomo, which
received only 21 first choices (6%), is restricted almost

Expanding Horizons 275

 14-5. ‘Gray’

276 chapter fourteen

 Table 14-15. Responses for ‘Gray’ by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11 12 13–15 16 or more
pardo 69.8 59.6 43.8 37.5 43.9
plomo 7.9 8.5 6.3 3.1 1.5
gris 11.1 25.5 32.5 45.3 47.0
Other or No response 11.1 6.4 17.5 14.1 7.6
N 63 47 80 64 66

Table 14-16. Responses for ‘Ankle’ by Years of education (percentages)

0–8 9–11 12 13–15 16 or more
hues(it)o sabroso 50.9 27.5 25.7 18.3 17.2
tobillo 8.8 15.7 10.8 23.3 23.4
ankle 8.8 5.9 6.8 6.7 3.1
Other response 19.3 29.4 31.1 15.0 26.6
No response 12.3 21.6 25.7 36.7 29.7
N 57 51 74 60 64

entirely to Border Spanish. It, too, is used in Mexico,
documented in Santamaría’s dictionary (1959). But the
dominant term in the Border Spanish territory and
becoming quite prominent in the Traditional Spanish
region is the standard label gris, the term of preference for
105 consultants (32%).
We saw already in table 14-10 that the label gris for
‘Gray’ is increasingly favored as number of courses in
Spanish increases. One man directed his wrath about the
impact of the Spanish classroom on his daughter, specifi-
cally citing this lexical item:
(14-2) Un día vino la Verónica y dijo que le habían
enseñado en la escuela que pardo era gris. ‘One
day Veronica came and said that they had taught
her in school that gray was gris.’ (interview 41)
Table 14-15 shows that this standard term also increases
dramatically across the educational levels, from 11%
at the lowest level to 47% among the college graduates.
The consequence of this increase is that pardo, the typi-
cally Traditional Spanish variant, undergoes consider-
able erosion, from 70% to 44%. Notice that in this case
the Border Spanish variant plomo also generally declines
with more years of education.
For ‘Ankle,’ discussed previously in connection with
map 11-11, the fall from favor of the nonstandard huesito
sabroso or hueso sabroso is still more pronounced, sliding
from 51% of the least educated to just 17% of those having a
college degree (see table 14-16). Again we see that the pref-
erence for the standard Spanish variant, tobillo, increases
along with education and contributes to the demise of the
‘sweet bone’ form. But part of the decline in the nonstan-
dard label is attributable to the loss of skills discussed
in chapter 13. It cannot surprise us to find that the No
response category (inability to respond to the stimulus)
also increases with education, an education imparted
almost exclusively in English.
A sampling of some other lexical forms that are asso-
ciated with educational attainment is contained in table
14-17. A pattern that the reader may have noted in some
of the preceding tables is reinforced when a number of
linguistic variables are displayed together this way. In
about half of the cases, the thirteen to fifteen years of
education group shows a stronger preference for the stan-
dard label than the highest group, those persons hold-
ing a university degree. Thus, for example, while 20% of
the some-college group chose desayuno as the label for
‘Breakfast,’ only 13% of the college graduates did so, a
percentage even smaller than that of the high school grad-
uates. Such behavior may strike us as counterintuitive—
at least at first glance.
However, this kind of pattern may well reflect a
general sociolinguistic tendency reported in many stud-
ies. The most successful members of society often seem
to be more comfortable in their language skins than
those of the just lower rung of the socioeconomic ladder.
This lower group often shows greater signs of linguistic

Expanding Horizons 277

Table 14-17. Selected standard lexical forms by Years of education (percentages)
16 or
0–8 9–11 12 13–15 more
afeitarse (vs. varied) ‘Shave’ 0.0 0.0 0.0 10.9 6.0

cerdo, puerco (vs. marrano, cochino) ‘Pig’ 0.0 0.0 4.9 6.3 10.3

lata (vs. bote, jarro) ‘Tin can’ 3.3 8.2 8.9 9.4 18.5

autobús (vs. varied) ‘Bus’ 3.3 12.0 9.0 20.3 19.4

maleta (vs. velís) ‘Suitcase’ 3.4 2.0 3.8 9.4 13.8

enfermera (vs. nodriza) ‘Nurse’ 3.4 14.0 12.7 28.6 18.5

suéter (vs. suera) ‘Sweater’ 3.4 8.0 3.8 29.7 33.8

correcaminos (vs. paisano) ‘Roadrunner’ 4.8 6.0 7.3 27.7 17.9

desayuno (vs. almuerzo) ‘Breakfast’ 5.1 6.1 15.4 20.0 12.7

abrigo (vs. varied) ‘Overcoat’ 5.2 2.0 10.3 15.6 18.5

cascada (vs. varied) ‘Waterfall’ 5.2 8.2 7.4 17.5 21.2

lago (vs. laguna) ‘Lake’ 6.6 15.7 15.6 34.9 28.8

regla (vs. rula) ‘Ruler’ 6.8 6.1 10.4 15.6 29.9

dentista (vs. dientista) ‘Dentist’ 6.9 20.8 30.8 46.0 49.3

frenos (vs. brecas) ‘Brakes’ 7.7 6.1 10.4 11.5 20.6

murciélago (vs. varied) ‘Bat’ 9.4 10.0 7.3 24.6 20.6

tocino (vs. jamón) ‘Bacon’ 10.0 12.0 21.5 25.0 20.0

actriz (vs. actor(a)) ‘Actress’ 11.1 18.0 23.0 36.1 34.3

globo (vs. balún) ‘Balloon’ 11.7 12.0 17.1 41.7 20.6

regalo (vs. presente) ‘Present’ 11.7 25.5 21.8 37.7 37.3

piel (vs. cuero) ‘Skin’ (of human) 15.8 33.3 31.2 40.7 53.7

dólar (vs. peso) ‘Dollar’ 16.4 28.0 31.3 46.9 43.1

falda (vs. nagua(s)) ‘Skirt’ 18.6 27.1 33.3 42.9 38.5

Navidad (vs. crismes, crismas) ‘Christmas’ 18.6 31.8 25.7 31.0 43.8

avión (vs. varied) ‘Airplane’ 27.9 34.0 34.6 54.7 43.3

o(b)scuro (vs. escuro) ‘Darkness’ 28.1 31.3 30.5 50.0 51.5

mariposa (vs. palom(it)a) ‘Butterfly’ 35.9 44.0 39.0 60.9 61.8

silla (vs. silleta) ‘Kitchen chair’ 37.7 52.1 49.4 62.5 55.2

maestro (vs. mestro) ‘Teacher’ 47.0 51.0 50.6 64.5 72.1

278 chapter fourteen

 Table 14-18. Responses for ‘Form of idioma’ by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11
idomia 56.9 42.0
idioma 43.1 58.0
N 65 50
Table 14-19. Responses for ‘Gender of idioma’ by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11
Feminine gender (la) 92.2 81.6
Masculine gender (el) 7.8 18.4
N 64 49
insecurity and tries harder, so to speak, linguistically.
William Labov labels this phenomenon the “hypercor-
rect pattern” (1972, 244–45), that is, where members of the
second-highest status group manifests hypercorrection in
linguistic behavior by “go[ing] beyond the highest-status
group in their tendency to use the forms considered
correct and appropriate for formal styles” (1972, 126).
Choice of grammatical forms often also shows a
clear association with education. The noun commonly
used for ‘language’ in New Mexican Spanish varies in
two ways. First, the lexical form may be either the stan-
dard Spanish idioma or the nonstandard form with
vowel metathesis idomia (see the earlier conversational
example 10-10). Second, there is grammatical variation
in the gender assigned to this noun, as manifest through
agreement of its modifiers, such as the definite article:
feminine la in the nonstandard (examples 10-1 and 14-1)
or masculine el in the standard (example 2-11). Although
words ending in -a usually carry feminine gender (as
previously discussed concerning cuara for ‘Quarter,’
map 10-7), this “irregular” assignment of masculine
gender applies also to a number of other a-final words
of Greek origin, such as problema and clima. Giving
idioma feminine gender, then, amounts only to a regu-
larization of the system, but as we know from English,
regularization of irregular forms (such as throwed for
threw) is often highly stigmatized.
In New Mexican Spanish, however, giving nonstan-
dard feminine gender to idioma/idomia is the norm,
preferred by fully 79% of our consultants (252 of 321).
Map 14-6 for the variable ‘Gender of idioma’ shows that
masculine gender assignment is favored only sporadi-
cally around the NMCOSS region. There is a significant
Expanding Horizons
12 13–15 16 or more
29.6 16.7 10.4
70.4 83.3 89.6
71 60 67
12 13–15 16 or more
82.2 75.0 63.6
17.8 25.0 36.4
73 60 66
concentration of this standard Spanish preference only in
the southern Las Cruces area.
In contrast, the standard form idioma is the norm
in the NMCOSS region, at least in the interview setting,
preferred by 221 of 320 consultants (69%). Map 14-7 for the
variable ‘Form of idioma’ shows that idomia occurs as a
Traditional Spanish phenomenon. The standard variant
idioma, while dominant in the southern quarter, appears
throughout the survey area. Geography appears to play
only a small role in the gender assignment for this word
and only a slightly greater role in its lexical form.
Education, however, exercises a strong influence on
both kinds of variation. Table 14-18 shows that the stig-
matized form with metathesis becomes increasingly
rejected by each higher level of education. The preference
for the standard idioma rises to 9 out of 10 of those having
sixteen or more years of education.
Adopting the standard masculine gender, however,
proves more difficult. While more than two-thirds (69%)
of the NMCOSS consultants overall offered the standard
form idioma, only 21% chose to use the standard article
el. Nonetheless, table 14-19 demonstrates a conspicuous
increase in preference for the standard gender with more
years of education.
Education shows a slightly stronger association
with these two phenomena than does the formal study
of Spanish. Why might this be? Perhaps the explana-
tion relates to the common use in the Spanish class-
room of the alternative term lengua for ‘language.’ That
is, the more colloquial term idioma (or idomia) may not
surface regularly in the classroom, thereby allowing it
to escape serving as a target for correction of form and
gender. The well-educated, on the other hand, tend to
279
 14-6. ‘Gender of idioma’

280 chapter fourteen

 14-7. ‘Form of idioma’

Expanding Horizons 281

 Table 14-20. Selected standard grammatical forms by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11 12 13–15 16 or more
mamás (vs. mamases) ‘Mothers’ 16.4 28.6 43.8 53.3 59.7
papás (vs. papases) ‘Fathers’ 19.0 26.5 43.7 42.4 53.7
vi (vs. vide) ‘I saw’ 31.6 48.9 43.2 66.7 65.2
vio (vs. vido) ‘He saw’ 36.4 57.4 61.3 66.7 74.2
hemos (vs. hamos) ‘We have’ 50.9 48.8 47.1 61.4 73.8
pies (vs. pieses) ‘Feet’ 80.7 83.7 84.0 85.2 92.4

have greater opportunities for conversational interac-
tion with educated Spanish speakers. Language happens
to be a common conversational topic and there is a good
chance such encounters will reveal the stigmatized status
of forms such as idomia and “bad” gender assignment.
Table 14-20 lists the standard variants of several
other grammatical forms that increase in frequency with
increased education. Curiously, the hypercorrect pattern
does not show up clearly with the grammatical variables
in our data. Reaching the highest levels of educational
attainment appears not to let one relax and be comfort-
able with nonstandard grammatical forms.
Education in general and study of the Spanish
language in particular, then, contribute importantly to
the nature of New Mexican Spanish today. We can antici-
pate that the influence will only accelerate in the future.
That prognosis is strengthened by the linguistic impact
of recent immigration from Mexico, a topic to which we
turn in the next chapter.

282 chapter fourteen

 Chap ter 15
Coming Full Circle
The Impact of Recent
Mexican Immigration
• Over the past century and a half, the Spanish speak-
ers of New Mexico and southern Colorado have
been buffeted by powerful forces. Chapter 10 considers
the pervasive influence of the English language and U.S.
culture. The linguistic influence on New Mexican Spanish
of that contact, however, amounted largely to the borrow-
ing of lexical items to label new or different entities intro-
duced by U.S. culture. But we pointed out in chapter 13
that another consequence of that contact is an unstable
bilingualism that leads to loss of Spanish skills and even-
tual monolingualism in English. Chapter 14 examines
the influence of increasing exposure to standard Spanish
through educational experience and the associated
expansion of contact with Spanish speakers from other
countries. Finally, the present chapter explores another
powerful current of history that will likely determine the
future form of New Mexican Spanish. This latest force is
the Spanish of modern Mexico.
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the
Mexican-American War and transferred to the United
States over half of the national territory of Mexico (not
including the previous loss of Texas). Suddenly there was a
political border separating the Mexican people of Mexico
from the Mexican people of New Mexico. Although the
immediate border area remained porous to the coming
and going of people who had been under one flag and
spoke the same language, continued contact with Mexico
farther north in the New Mexico territory was greatly
reduced. Northern New Mexico already had an estab-
lished population and there was no surplus of economic
opportunities that might have attracted lots of Mexican
immigrants. In fact, the Hispanic population in northern
New Mexico had grown to sixty thousand by the middle
of the nineteenth century (Abbott 1976, 38), a density
sufficient to cause Northerners to begin moving farther
northward to colonize the San Luis Valley in southern
Colorado, where the first town, San Luis, was established
in 1851. Moreover, some Northerners took advantage
of a guarantee in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and
elected to move south into the Mesilla Valley west of the
Río Grande to remain citizens of Mexico—only shortly
afterward to be incorporated once again into the United
States with the Gadsden Purchase of 1853.
The Americanization of the Southwest has progressed
relentlessly since the adoption of the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, but several events over the last hundred years
or so have contributed to a gradually deeper and deeper
penetration of modern Mexican influence in most parts
283
of New Mexico and southern Colorado. During the late
nineteenth century the need for workers on the railroads
and in the mines attracted many Mexican immigrants
(Martinez 1957, 7–11). From 1910 to 1917 the political,
social, and economic instability created by the Mexican
Revolution, coupled with the drawing power of U.S.
economic expansion, especially in agriculture, encour-
aged more Mexicans to immigrate to the region. At the
same time, World War I, with its demand for military
personnel and development of war material industries,
created an expanded need for “braceros”—contracted
Mexican laborers, primarily farm workers. But, “of the
four border states, New Mexico in 1920 had the small-
est Mexican population. The principal reason being that
it had the least to offer the braceros. . . . The absence of
agricultural or industrial diversification has always kept
the number of Mexican immigrants comparatively low in
New Mexico” (Martinez 1957, 67). Nevertheless, accord-
ing to the estimates of Gutmann et al. (2000, table 3), the
Mexico-born population of New Mexico nearly doubled
between the 1910 and 1920 censuses, from 12,759 to 24,014,
increasing from 3.9% of the total population to 6.7%.
The Great Depression era and the implosion of the
cotton market naturally reduced Mexican immigration
substantially during the 1930s. But immigration from
Mexico increased dramatically again during World War II
with the institution in 1942 of the Bracero Program, the
formal adoption by both governments of a guest-worker
program that had been initiated by Mexico in 1920. Because
of widespread abuses, the Bracero Program was discontin-
ued in 1964. But Mexican immigration, both legal and ille-
gal, continues even more strongly up to the present because
of the lure of the powerful U.S. economy.
The braceros of the first half of the twentieth century
tended to be migratory because of the seasonal nature
of the agricultural crops, and they typically returned to
Mexico for the cold season. Nevertheless, braceros, like
all immigrants, tend to put down roots. Those who moved
into southern Colorado, while small in number, could
work in the mines during the cold season and were there-
fore less likely to be transitory. Paradoxically, one result
of the collapse of cotton in the 1920s and 1930s was that
some braceros settled down permanently in the Mesilla
Valley of the Río Grande in southern New Mexico.
There was one thing that all of these immigrants
brought to the new land. They were native speakers of
Spanish, often monolingual or with only marginal skills
in English, and they spoke the variety of Spanish they had
acquired growing up in Mexico. All those immigrants,
particularly those who became permanent residents of New
284
Mexico and southern Colorado, were in a position to have
an impact on the further development of New Mexican
Spanish. Although our survey excluded immigrants (with
the one exception previously noted), some of the children
and grandchildren of immigrants were included in the
NMCOSS sample, and our analyses of the NMCOSS data
make clear the significance of that impact.
Standardization versus Mexicanization
Recent linguistic influence from other Spanishes comes
from two main sources: the standard variety and the
modern Mexican variety. In the preceding chapter, we
illustrated the intrusion of standard Spanish associated
with classroom study of Spanish and higher educational
status. Sometimes that influence appears to be indepen-
dent of the Mexican influence. For example, although
rojo for ‘Red’ and teléfono for ‘Telephone’ are strongly
associated with those two education variables (see tables
14-1, 14-2, 14-10, and 14-13), maps 13-4 for ‘Red’ and 14-4
for ‘Telephone’ reveal no particular strength of those
standard variants near the Mexican border. That is, the
presence of these variants is associated with the two
educational variables, not with the temporal or geograph-
ical proximity of their users to Mexico.
On the other hand, some terms are connected
to both influences. We can feel confident of modern
Mexican Spanish influence when a variant is character-
istic of Border Spanish and not of Traditional Spanish.
And we saw in the last chapter numerous cases where the
variant characteristic of Border Spanish is also associated
with education. Witness, for example, the geographical
concentrations of Navidad for ‘Christmas’ on map 14-2
and of regla for ‘Ruler’ on map 14-3 and the connections
of those two variables to education manifested in tables
14-4 and 14-17 and tables 14-6 and 14-17, respectively.
Consider another example. The majority of the
NMCOSS consultants (197 of the 334 respondents, 59%)
identified the U.S. paper monetary unit ‘Dollar’ as a peso.
The conversational use of the term is illustrated in exam-
ple 15-1, a comment by a fifty-two-year-old woman from
Tomé, New Mexico, describing how she would help out
as a child in her father’s gasoline station, obviously quite
a few years back when there was greater value to a dollar
and cheaper gasoline:
(15-1) [Dicían,] “Échame un peso de gas.” Iba y
pompeaba los cuatro galones. ‘[They’d say,]
“Give me a dollar’s worth of gas.” I’d go and
pump four gallons.’ (interview 1)
chapter fifteen
 Table 15-1. Responses for ‘Dollar’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
No courses 1 course
peso 69.3 55.0
dólar and variants 24.6 40.0
Other response 6.1 5.0
N 114 60
The peso label is characteristic of Traditional Spanish,
as map 15-1 makes clear. We noted in chapter 10 concern-
ing map 10-7 and the terms for ‘Quarter’ that the peso was
the basic monetary unit from the earliest days of silver
mining in Mexico. It seems likely that this Traditional
Spanish usage represents an archaism like dos reales
for ‘Quarter.’ That assumption is supported by the fact
that the use of peso for ‘Dollar’ also occurs in that other
isolated U.S. dialect, the Isleño Spanish of Louisiana
(Lipski 1990, 78).
Of course, for those with a closer connection to
Mexico, peso has a very distinct reference. It is the princi-
pal Mexican monetary unit. No doubt as a consequence
of this semantic conflict, we find 114 preferences for the
standard term dólar, which includes 16 dolar with stress
on the second syllable and 10 dólare. These standard-
based terms are particularly associated with proximity to
the Mexican border as well as with other areas of twenti-
eth-century immigration from Mexico. The presence of
the term dólar in New Mexican Spanish, then, results in
part from the influence of modern Mexican Spanish.
But the dólar variants also occur scattered around
the Traditional Spanish territory. Therefore, we can
expect this term, as the international standard Spanish
label for ‘Dollar,’ to be associated with the educational
variables as well. And indeed it is. Table 15-1 indicates that
the preference for dólar increases from a fourth of those
who never formally studied Spanish to half of those who
had taken three or more courses. Table 14-17 in the previ-
ous chapter shows an equally strong impact of educa-
tional attainment. In sum, both education and modern
Mexican Spanish play a role in the appearance of dólar in
the NMCOSS region.
A little bit different is the case of ‘Nurse.’ Over 80%
of our consultants (268 of 329) identified a picture of a
typical nurse attending a patient in a hospital room as
nodriza (although, as mentioned in chapter 13, 44 of
these responses were phonologically distorted versions
of nodriza). Map 15-2 shows that the nodriza responses
(excluding the distortions) blanket the New Mexican
Coming Full Circle
2 courses 3 or more courses
64.9 42.9
28.1 47.9
7.0 10.0
57 71
Spanish territory. It is a feature not just of Traditional
Spanish but of all New Mexican Spanish. The data
collected by Alvar (2000, 236) show the same promi-
nence of nodriza here and no cases at all in the other three
Southwest states.
Now, the standard meaning of nodriza elsewhere is
‘wet nurse,’ the woman who suckles another’s child. The
standard Spanish term for a hospital nurse is enfermera,
a nominal form related to the adjective enfermo ‘sick’
and the verb enfermarse ‘to get sick.’ We received only
53 preferences (16% of the responses) for this standard
label, and as the data for enfermera previously reported
in tables 14-10 and 14-17 attest, its occurrence is strongly
predicted by both the formal Spanish variable and the
general education variable. Those responses are distrib-
uted haphazardly around the area (see map 15-2), though
with a disproportionately high number in the Border
Spanish areas, indicating that it is associated in part with
twentieth-century immigration.
However, many consultants in the Border Spanish
areas prefer nodriza, and the showing of enfermera
near the border is not particularly strong, suggesting
that nodriza might also be used for ‘Nurse’ in Mexico.
Unfortunately, ‘Nurse’ was not elicited in the ALM.
Santamaría’s 1959 Diccionario de mejicanismos does
not contain nodriza, and the DRAE does not admit the
general ‘nurse’ meaning for this term. In any case, the
influence of education appears to exert a greater influence
than Mexican Spanish in the appearance of enfermera in
New Mexican Spanish.
While the standard Spanish and Mexican Spanish
forces unite against long-entrenched New Mexican Spanish
terms in the cases of ‘Dollar’ and ‘Nurse,’ the opponent in
the case of ‘Balloon’ is somewhat different. The standard
and Mexican Spanish term is globo, the preference of only
66 (20%) of 327 NMCOSS respondents. The Traditional
Spanish term for ‘Balloon’ may once have been bomba,
as used occasionally elsewhere in the Americas, but that
label has been practically eradicated by the Anglicism
balún, the first choice of 199 of 327 consultants (61%).
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286 chapter fifteen

 15-2. ‘Nurse’

Coming Full Circle 287

An additional 39 persons (12%) offered the unassimilated
English balloon, differentiated primarily by the schwa
vowel of the first syllable. In contrast, there were only
5 responses of bomba and 1 of bombilla, all reported by
speakers representing rural northern New Mexico and
southern Colorado.
Map 15-3 demonstrates that the integrated Anglicism
balún occurs everywhere while the standard term globo
is primarily a feature of Border Spanish. But as the data
included in tables 14-5 and 14-17 of the previous chapter
indicate, the use of globo is also quite strongly tied to both
coursework in Spanish and years of education.
Given that the opposition is an Anglicism, it may
seem surprising to find only 66 responses of globo for
‘Balloon’ in New Mexican Spanish. It is to be recalled,
however, from map 10-6 that globo is the preferred label
for ‘Lightbulb’ in the Traditional Spanish area, the choice
of 60% of our NMCOSS consultants. Here we have a
conflict of dialects that produces an interesting result:
18 of our consultants offered globo for both ‘Balloon’ and
‘Lightbulb.’ These persons seem to have intimate experi-
ence with the contact of Border Spanish and Traditional
Spanish. For example, 11 of the 18 represent the San Luis
Valley and Arkansas River areas of Colorado and the
plains of eastern New Mexico, where twentieth-century
immigration of agricultural workers from Mexico was
especially important.
Another Anglicism under siege from the two forces
is of particular interest because it concerns a technologi-
cal development that occurred after incorporation into
the United States. It is not unexpected, then, that brecas
should turn out to be the overwhelmingly preferred term
in New Mexican Spanish for the ‘Brakes’ on an automo-
bile. This was the response of 4 out of 5 of our consul-
tants (252 of 314, 80%), and another 6 persons responded
with the verb brequear, 2 with masculine breque, and 4
with English brakes. In contrast, only 35 persons (12%)
preferred the standard Spanish word frenos, though 3
others gave a verb form, 2 frenar and 1 frenear.
As we saw in the previous chapter (tables 14-10 and
14-17), the standard frenos increases with exposure to the
standardizing influences of the two education variables.
But it is also linked to modern Mexican Spanish. Map 15-4
indicates that even though brecas and its integrated vari-
ants dominate mightily even in the Border Spanish areas,
frenos is manifest mostly in those areas of most recent
Mexican immigration.
Like so many words for new phenomena, frenos for
the brakes on a automobile represents an extension of
the meaning of an existing word, in this case the freno
288
meaning ‘bit, bridle,’ the device employed to bring to a
halt the horse one is riding. The same is true, of course,
for the origin of the English label: brake once had the
meaning ‘bridle.’
Map 15-4 includes a third term for ‘Brakes,’ maneas,
that shows up only in rural areas of Traditional Spanish.
This label is very much a minority variant, offered by just
10 consultants (3%, including twice as the verb manear),
but it developed in precisely the same way as frenos
and brakes. Some Spanish speakers decided to adopt a
distinct braking term from horsemanship, manea, the
word for ‘hobble.’ It seems that maneas, however, never
had a chance against the powerful English brecas. It
remains to be seen how effective the twin forces of stan-
dard Spanish and Mexican Spanish will be in displac-
ing the Anglicism with frenos. After all, brecas is now
known and used in Mexico. (Santamaría 1959 includes
only the masculine breque with its meaning restricted to
the brakes of a train.)
Mexicanisms
So, yes, Mexican Spanish and standard Spanish often find
themselves as allies aligned against the idiosyncrasies of
New Mexican Spanish. But immigration from modern
Mexico exhibits a linguistic influence independent of
the educational factors. For example, the use of peseta
for ‘Quarter,’ which map 10-7 showed to be strongly char-
acteristic of Border Spanish, displays no relationship to
either the number of Spanish courses or years of educa-
tion. Similarly, calcetines for ‘Socks’ is strongly associated
with Border Spanish (see map 5-5) but not at all with the
two educational variables.
These modern Mexicanisms seem to spread in New
Mexican Spanish through everyday oral communica-
tion, and they tend to relate to topics of home and family
having less connection with education. The geographical
distributions of these new forms conform particularly to
those areas that have received the bulk of the immigration
from Mexico over the last hundred years: the southern
third of New Mexico closest to the border, the major cities
(particularly Albuquerque and Santa Fe in New Mexico
and Pueblo in Colorado), the mining and industry areas
of northwestern New Mexico, and agricultural areas of
the eastern plains, the San Luis Valley of south-central
Colorado, and along the Arkansas River of southeastern
Colorado. They tend not to occur in rural areas of New
Mexico where Traditional Spanish has long been strong,
but we will see evidence that they are in fact beginning to
displace some Traditional forms.
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290 chapter fifteen

 Table 15-2. Responses for ‘Cabbage’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)
No courses 1 course
col, coles 82.4
repollo 15.1
Other or No response 2.5
N 119
Thus, we saw in our very first data map, map 2-1, that
repollo for ‘Cabbage’ is strongly associated with Border
Spanish in contrast with the standard col so firmly
entrenched in Traditional Spanish. Yet the years-of-
education variable displays no clear association with the
‘Cabbage’ labels. Those who had less than a ninth-grade
education reported 83% col and 16% repollo while at the
opposite extreme those with a college degree reported
just slightly lower proportions of each: 80% col and 12%
repollo. Moreover, the classroom Spanish variable shows
a very slight but positive correlation not with the standard
col but with the Mexican repollo, as shown in table 15-2.
There is a good reason for this lack of association
with education: ‘Cabbage’ is much less likely than ‘Red’
or ‘Dollar’ or ‘Christmas’ to show up in the Spanish class-
room or in conversations with outsiders.
Even less likely to be discussed in those circum-
stances is ‘Naked.’ Given the nature of our interview
sessions usually involving strangers, it will come as no
surprise to learn that references to nakedness turned up
rarely in conversational contexts. One example—from a
man describing how a circus arrival was advertised in the
small town of Wagon Mound, New Mexico—is deliber-
ately (and delightfully) ambiguous:
(15-2) Llegaban los maromeros allá gritando, “¡Vengan
a ver mujeres (en pelotas/empelotas) esta noche!”
dicían ‘The acrobats would come there shouting,
“Come see the women (on balls/naked) tonight!”
they’d say.’ (interview 22)
The 3 most common words for ‘Naked’ in New
Mexican Spanish—desnudo, empeloto, and encuerado—
are plotted on map 15-5. Spread throughout the region with
no particular regional affiliation is the most popular term,
the standard desnudo, the preference of 139 persons (42%).
Map 15-5 shows that the term empeloto, favored by 118
consultants (36%), is characteristic of Traditional Spanish
(as are 9 additional cases of peloto, not included on the
map). This label is an adjective—note the agreement with
Coming Full Circle
2 courses 3 or more courses
71.7 79.3 66.2
16.7 17.2 23.9
11.7 3.4 9.9
60 58 71
mujeres in example 15-2. Yet it derives from the preposi-
tional phrase given in the DRAE as en pelota or en pelo-
tas for ‘naked’; however, this is not the pelota meaning
‘ball’ that makes example 15-2 ambiguous but rather
a derived form of pelo ‘hair’ (another term for ‘naked’
listed in the DRAE is a pelo). This derived adjective is an
Americanismo that occurs broadly in the New World. In
Colombia, for example, empeloto and empelota (which
presumably should be en pelota) occur as minority labels
in the more remote areas across the southern half of the
highlands and the eastern Amazon basin states (ALEC
vol. 4, mapas 2 and 3). Finally, encuerado, the choice of
49 persons (15%), is characteristic of Border Spanish.
This NMCOSS distribution suggests that encuerado for
‘Naked’ is commonplace in Mexico, and it is indeed listed
in Santamaría (1959).
The ALM did not include this item. However, it did
include a related form, the verb ‘Undress,’ that is, ‘get
undressed’ (mapa 937). As in our NMCOSS survey, by far
the most common ALM responses for ‘Undress’ are desve-
stirse and desnudarse. But there are some 3 dozen mentions
of the more colloquial encuerarse ‘strip (to the skin),’
whence the resultant state encuerado ‘stripped (to the skin),
naked.’ It is also significant that the ALM reports only 3
cases of empelotarse for ‘Undress.’ Similarly, for the state of
Sinaloa, Mendoza Guerrero reports 12 mentions of encu-
erarse and none of empelotarse (2002, 129–33). In contrast,
the NMCOSS received 8 preferences of empelotarse for
‘Undress’ plus 5 other mentions and Alvar (2000, 203)
lists 3 mentions, all in the Traditional Spanish region. We
also received 3 preferences of encuerarse plus 3 additional
mentions, all in the Border Spanish areas where we find
encuerado for ‘Naked.’ (A woman from Anthony, on the
southern border with Texas between Las Cruces and El
Paso, jokingly admonished interviewer Ysaura Bernal-
Enríquez that enchinarse el cuerito ‘for the skin to crinkle
up, to get goose bumps’ was very different from encuer-
arse el chinito ‘for the curly-haired [or Chinese] boy to get
naked.’) Pedrero (2002, 63–64) reports 1 case of encuerarse
in Texas, but Alvar fails to include it in his list.
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292 chapter fifteen

 Table 15-3. Responses for ‘Naked’ by Years of education (percentages)
0–8 9–11 12 13–15 16 or more
desnudo 32.3 47.1 50.6 33.3 44.8
empeloto 50.0 35.3 22.8 31.7 43.3
encuerado 14.5 9.8 16.5 21.7 9.0
Other or No response 3.2 7.8 10.1 13.3 3.0
N 62 51 79 60 67

Table 15-4. Responses for ‘Bucket’ by Formal study of Spanish (percentages)

No courses 1 course 2 courses 3 or more courses
balde 9.4 8.1 13.3 11.6
bote 9.4 12.9 5.0 10.1
cubeta 53.0 53.2 63.3 53.6
cubo 7.7 3.2 0.0 4.3
olla 17.9 14.5 13.3 10.1
Other response 2.6 8.1 5.0 10.1
N 117 62 60 69

Thus, the use of empeloto for ‘Naked’ and empelotarse
for ‘Undress’ identify one as a speaker of Traditional
Spanish. It is equally apparent that encuerado for ‘Naked’
and encuerarse for ‘Undress’ have entered New Mexican
Spanish via immigration from Mexico. But these Border
Spanish labels too, like repollo, have no significant
connection to the educational variables. More unex-
pectedly, neither does desnudo. Table 15-3, for example,
provides the cross-tabulation for education in general,
revealing that none of the 3 variants exhibits a trend to
increase or decrease with more years of education. The
cross-tabulation for coursework in Spanish is equally
nonsignificant, showing no linear slope of interest. (With
regard to the ‘Undress’ variable, the numbers of collo-
quial encuerarse and empelotarse responses are too small
for cross-tabulation with the education variables.)
Another item that is apt to appear infrequently if
at all in the Spanish classroom or in interactions with
outsiders is ‘Bucket’ (or ‘pail’ for some English speakers).
We received from 337 consultants 5 principal responses
for this humble implement: balde (36 preferences, 11%),
bote (31, 9%), cubeta (187, 55%), olla (47, 14%), and cubo
(15, 4%). Table 15-4 indicates the choice of these terms by
persons at the four levels of Spanish coursework. The use
of olla drops slightly (from 18% to 10%) with more expo-
sure to classroom Spanish. But there is no other even
vague trend in this table.
But map 15-6 demonstrates that there are clear
geographical tendencies for 4 of the 5 ‘Bucket’ variants
(bote is distributed widely and unsystematically and
displays no regional patterning). In numbers as well as in
breadth of distribution, the label that characterizes New
Mexican Spanish from top to bottom is cubeta, a widely
used standard term for ‘Bucket’ that is derived as an old
diminutive of cuba ‘cask, barrel.’ Example 8-16 illustrates
the use of cubeta in conversation. A related term, cubo,
which is also widely considered standard, is a feature of
the Spanish of the rural northern third of the NMCOSS
territory, as is the label olla, which in the NMCOSS region
and elsewhere generally has the meaning ‘pot, pan,’ but it
is noteworthy that the more isolated southern and eastern
areas of Colombia also commonly use olla for ‘Bucket’
(ALEC vol. 2, mapa 51). These 2 Traditional Spanish terms
seem destined for the dustbin, cubo in particular because
of its low frequency, but also olla because of its other more
widespread meaning. The findings of Lope Blanch (1990a,
91) for the town of Mora in the Traditional Spanish heart-
land mirror our findings; the 4 people he interviewed
offered 2 olla, 1 cubeta, and 1 cubo.
Finally, map 15-6 shows that another standard
Spanish label, balde, is definitively a feature of Border
Spanish, though it too shows no association with the
educational variables. It has been brought in, not by the
standardizing influences of education but by immigration

Coming Full Circle 293

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294 chapter fifteen

from Mexico. Consistent with these findings is the fact
that balde and cubeta are the 2 dominant labels across
Mexico, according to the ALM (mapa 861). Cubeta was
clearly brought into New Mexican Spanish a long time
ago while balde is a quite recent import.
The 2 New Mexican Spanish labels for the homely
‘Water hose’ for watering the lawn and garden also
show absolutely no association with the two educational
variables. The 2 terms are the standard manguera (125
responses, 39%) and the colloquial tripa (186 responses,
57%). Tripa was the choice of 58% of those who reported
no formal study of Spanish and a barely different 54%
of those who had taken three or more courses. In simi-
lar fashion, it was the preference of 59% of those with no
more than an eighth-grade education and of 62% of those
holding a college degree.
On the other hand, map 15-7 shows that both terms
are widely distributed in the NMCOSS region, but with
manguera somewhat more characteristic of Border
Spanish and tripa somewhat more characteristic of
Traditional Spanish. Once again it seems clear that it is
modern immigration from Mexico, not educational expo-
sure to standard Spanish, that has driven the spread of the
standard variant so deeply into New Mexican Spanish.
No doubt also driving this spread is the fact that tripa
happens to have another meaning. It is the word for ‘tripe’
or ‘intestine.’ Well, that’s what a hose looks like. And it
has a very similar function. Our own gut-level reaction is
that the use of tripa for ‘Water hose’ is very reasonable.
A Century of Increasing Influence
What we are calling “modern Mexican” influence has
been taking place for over a hundred years, from the late
nineteenth century to the late twentieth century when our
data were collected (though the influence clearly contin-
ues its conqueror’s march in the twenty-first century). It
is possible to estimate, based on the extent of its spread,
when a modern Mexicanism made its entrance into New
Mexican Spanish. To illustrate, we will try to differenti-
ate, in a very rough and ready way, three general periods:
Early, Later, and Recent (we use initial capital letters with
these terms to emphasize their ad hoc nature).
Some modern Mexicanisms came quite early.
Consider, for example, the terms selected to name a
‘Kitchen chair’ of the most stereotypically plain, wooden
kind placed at a kitchen table (see map 15-8). Characteristic
of Traditional Spanish is the label silleta, a special dimin-
utive form of the standard word for ‘Kitchen chair,’ silla.
The DRAE lists silleta as an Americanism (it is widely
Coming Full Circle
used in Colombia, for example, according to ALEC vol.
4, mapa 244), and we can assume that it has been a part of
Traditional Spanish for centuries.
Silla, on the other hand, is a demonstrably Border
Spanish term. It’s the unanimous choice of southern New
Mexico and it dominates powerfully in the other Border
Spanish centers such as Albuquerque and the Arkansas
River area. Furthermore, it has spread strongly through-
out the Traditional Spanish area and has in fact become
the majority preference in New Mexican Spanish. A total
of 52% of the NMCOSS consultants (172 of 333) chose silla
while 47% (158 consultants) chose silleta. The ninety-
six-year-old weaver from the center of the Traditional
Spanish area of northern New Mexico reported,
(15-3) Ha oido dicir yo silla, pero nojotros dicemos
silleta. ‘I’ve heard it called silla, but we call it
silleta.’ (interview 219)
The remaining 3 respondents offered banco ‘bench,’ the
usual sitting place in a traditional Hispanic kitchen where
the bench was an extrusion from the adobe wall.
We interpret these findings to mean that silla
was among the first in the Early period of modern
Mexicanisms to enter New Mexican Spanish. The use
of pescado for ‘Fish’ and blusa for ‘Blouse’ are 2 other
Early intruders that have substantially displaced the
Traditional trucha and cuerpo labels (see maps 8-6 and
5-2). Appearing to be similarly early in their introduc-
tion to New Mexican Spanish, but not yet quite so exten-
sively entrenched, are sien for ‘Temple’ (see map 11-12)
and calcetines for ‘Socks’ (see map 5-5). In neither case,
however, has the modern Mexicanism become the choice
of the majority, though sien received more preferences
than its 2 competitors, and calcetines comes in a fairly
close second to the popular medias.
Making a Later period entrance is the use of canica
for the ‘Marble’ of childhood gaming. We see on map 15-9
that this standard Spanish label, the preference of 109 of
the 334 consultants (33%), is firmly implanted in the two
core areas of modern immigration from Mexico: southern
New Mexico and the Arkansas River area of southeastern
Colorado. However unlike the broader spread of the exem-
plars of the Early period, canica is barely manifest in the
core Traditional Spanish area outside of Albuquerque.
The Traditional Spanish term is bolita, reported by
197 consultants (59%), a word that is inexplicably absent
from Cobos (2003) though it was present in the 1983
version. Lope Blanch (1990a, 88) reports that bolita was
used for ‘Marble’ by all 4 of his Mora subjects but by no
295
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296 chapter fifteen

 15-8. ‘Kitchen chair’

Coming Full Circle 297

 15-9. ‘Marble’

298 chapter fifteen

one in the other three Southwest states. In addition, 12 of
our consultants offered the nondiminutive bola, which
is also distinctive of Traditional Spanish and is included
with bolita on map 15-9.
Now, the Atlas lingüístico de México (mapa 804)
reports not a single instance of either bolita or bola. It
does find in the northwest coast state of Sinaloa 3 cases
of a plausibly related boliche, but that form is now the
general Spanish term for the game of ‘bowling.’ Strongly
confirming the ALM finding, Mendoza Guerrero reports
that 22 of his 60 Sinaloan consultants utilize this boliche
label. He characterizes it as habla inculta ‘uncultured
speech’ (2002, 107). It seems that bolita and boliche ought
to have a historical relationship, but the directness of that
connection with ‘Marble’ remains a mystery to us.
The ALEC (vol. 3, mapa 276) demonstrates that bola
is the usual term for ‘Marble’ throughout Colombia, a
country known for linguistic conservatism. (There are
also a number of boliche there and only 3 mentions of
canica.) The DRAE acknowledges the use of bolita for
‘Marble’ in Argentina, so its occurrence in Colombia
and at opposite ends of Spanish America suggests that it
is an older Americanism that is dying out. That appears
to have been its fate in Mexico. Santamaría (1959), who
typically is documenting Mexican Spanish of the nine-
teenth century, reports the use of bolita for ‘Marble.’
We may surmise, therefore, that the apparent demise of
bolita in Mexican Spanish was fairly recent, perhaps as
late as the twentieth century. That supposition ties in
neatly with the NMCOSS findings of the uniformity of
canica in the areas of Mexican immigration during the
past century.
Other terms closely associated with Border Spanish
and seemingly representative of the Later period are vestido
for ‘Dress’ competing against the Traditional túnico, falda
for ‘Skirt’ competing against naguas, and sartén for ‘Skillet’
competing against puela. Our earlier maps 5-3, 6-9, and 9-4
show that the distributions of vestido, falda, and sartén are
very similar to that of canica.
In contrast to Early entering forms like silla and Later
entering forms like canica, we find in the NMCOSS data
evidence of Recent entrances of modern Mexican forms.
Previous maps show the more limited distributions of, for
example, chabacán(o) for ‘Apricot’ (map 5-6), moyote for
‘Mosquito’ (map 6-6) and murciélago for ‘Bat’ (map 8-11).
Still more limited, and therefore representing very Recent
incursions from Mexico, are the distributions of perrilla
for ‘Sty’ (map 8-12) and plomo for ‘Gray’ (map 14-5).
Another very Recent example is the labeling of a
‘Well’ used to draw up subsurface water by means of a
Coming Full Circle
bucket, rope, and pulley. Here we have one of the very few
cases where we know that the NMCOSS and the ALM
elicited a response in exactly the same way. For our survey
we adopted the same line drawing of a typical well that
appears in Lope Blanch’s Cuestionario (1970a, 83). (This
drawing is one of only sixty pictorial representations
employed in securing responses to the thousand items
in the ALM questionnaire, and many of those pictures
represent distinctively Mexican objects generally absent
from New Mexican Spanish culture.)
Map 15-10 displays the distributions of just 3 of the
‘Well’ labels. Noria is the overwhelmingly preferred term
in New Mexican Spanish, proposed by 279 of the 336
respondents (83%)—and by all 4 of Lope Blanch’s Mora
subjects (1990a, 91). In contrast, the heavily dominant
term in Mexico (ALM mapa 858) is pozo, though noria
makes a strong if still minority showing across north-
ern Mexico. In the conservative state of Sinaloa greater
balance appears; of 60 persons surveyed, 43 cited noria
and 35 pozo (Mendoza Guerrero 2002, 116–17). In contrast,
pozo barely shows up in our New Mexican Spanish results,
just 9 cases (and 1 of those cases is the woman born in
Mexico). Moreover, those few cases show up only in areas
of modern immigration. Pozo is clearly one of those New
Mexican Spanish words of very Recent vintage, brought
in probably by the wave of immigrants subsequent to
World War II.
The third term for ‘Well’ included on map 15-10 is
cisterna ‘cistern,’ the label preferred by 22 consultants.
This label always seemed to be clearly understood as a
storage place for water, not as a well that taps into water
below ground. Some speakers commented on the diffi-
culty of successfully reaching water by digging a well in
their areas and the necessity of hauling in water, often
from great distances, for storage in a cisterna. In appear-
ance and in function, a cistern was the most well-like
entity in the experience of some of our consultants.
Out with the Old, in with the New
The continuous and constantly increasing immigration
from Mexico brings continuous and constantly increas-
ing linguistic change. Although New Mexican Spanish
has always been a variety of Mexican Spanish, it is a vari-
ety that became more and more distinct through three
hundred years of less than intimate contact. The last
century, however, has begun to close that once-widening
chasm. The result of the Mexicanization process is the
replacement of Traditional Spanish forms by those that
have become more emblematic of modern Mexico.
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300 chapter fifteen

 The 2 New Mexican Spanish words for ‘Pea’ are
displayed on map 15-11, which shows clearly that the
Traditional Spanish term is alverjón, the choice of the
majority of our consultants (193 persons, 59%). Equally
clear is that the Border Spanish preference is chícharo,
reported by 99 persons (29%). There were an additional 13
distortions of alverjón (e.g., alverijón, arvejón, verjón) and
8 distortions of chícharo (e.g., chícaro, chícharro, chich-
arra), but these are excluded from the map.
Both of these terms have a lengthy and legitimate
Spanish ancestry and are included in the American
archaisms listing of Lerner (1974, 61, 122). Chícharo comes
originally from the Latin cicĕra but actually entered main-
stream Spanish, according to the DRAE, from čičar in the
Mozarabic dialect spoken in the Muslim areas of south-
ern Spain. Alverjón, on the other hand, derives directly
from the Latin ervilĭa, which is realized today in parts of
Spain as alverja or arvejo and generally in the Americas
as alverja. Why the New Mexican Spanish variant devel-
oped with the “augmentative” suffix -ón is not known.
Perhaps peas grow bigger in this region? The penetra-
tion of chícharo into the Traditional Spanish territory is
not as substantial as the advance of silla. Its geographical
patterning is almost identical to that of canica. We may
conclude from its distribution, then, that the introduction
of chícharo likely occurred in the Later period.
Map 15-12 shows the distributions of the 3 most
frequently used labels to identify an ordinary leather
‘Belt’ used by men. The widely preferred label is faja, the
response of 238 of 326 consultants (73%). Faja, which more
widely in Spanish typically refers to a ‘sash’ or ‘girdle,’
dominates overwhelmingly in the Traditional Spanish
region. Although faja occurs significantly in the Border
Spanish areas, those areas are also the domain of cinto,
which overall in our survey comes in a distant second with
59 preferences (18%). Generally in Spanish, cinto, refers
to a sash-like waist wrap and not the kind of belt illus-
trated in our picture. Finally, the standard Spanish term
for ‘Belt,’ cinturón, was preferred by only 11 consultants.
There is no pattern to its geographical distribution, but it
does show some correlation with the educational variables,
which makes sense even though the number is too small to
take this association as gospel. In addition to the 3 princi-
pal labels included on map 15-12, there were 10 choices of
vaqueta, the general word for ‘leather’; it occurs scattered
loosely across the northern half of the NMCOSS region.
The distribution of cinto on map 15-12 suggests a
Recent period import from Mexico, one that is making
substantial inroads into a region that must once have
been solidly faja territory. The fact that its use reveals no
Coming Full Circle
association with the two educational variables implies
a strictly immigration origin. Moreover, mapa 917 of
the ALM shows that, although standard cinturón may
be the most cited term across Mexico, cinto is almost
equally prominent overall and dominates across north-
ern Mexico, the origin of most recent immigrants to New
Mexico. Faja, on the other hand, is very much a minor-
ity form in Mexico, with only a small number of cases
occurring in the Yucatán Peninsula, the northeast, and
the central-west coast, regions that like New Mexico have
long been on the margins of Mexican linguistic fashion.
An even more recent import from Mexico is the use of
azadón for ‘Hoe.’ Azadón is the preferred term everywhere
in Mexico according to the ALM (mapa 883). However, map
15-13 indicates that this label has barely made an entrance
into the NMCOSS region, being the preferred label for only
44 of 336 consultants (13%). It shows up primarily along the
Río Grande in Doña Ana County, along the Pecos River in
southeastern New Mexico, and along the Arkansas River of
southeastern Colorado. That is, it appears mostly in those
agricultural areas that have attracted the most migrant
workers from Mexico, a perfectly reasonable distribution
for a quintessential farm implement.
By way of contrast, the overwhelmingly preferred
label for ‘Hoe’ everywhere else in New Mexican Spanish
is cavador, the preference of 268 persons. The promi-
nence of this label, beating out azadón even in Doña Ana
County, and the restricted distribution of azadón, implies
that cavador was until fairly recently the term universally
used from one end of New Mexican Spanish to the other.
It is quite mysterious, then, that not a single case of cava-
dor is reported for the ALM survey. And the disjunction
between our two surveys does not result from a difference
in elicitation procedure. The pictures employed in the two
surveys depict almost identical instruments.
Azadón, an augmentative form of azada, the term
for ‘Hoe’ apparently preferred in Spain, has a legitimate
ancestry as a noun from Latin. Cavador also has a legit-
imate Latin ancestry, but as a verb not a noun. It is a
derived from the verb cavar ‘to dig (with a tool)’ by the
addition of the suffix -dor to create an agent or (in this
case) instrument for digging. The absence of this vari-
ant in the ALM, the ALEC (also where azadón reigns
supreme), and the DRAE indicates that cavador was an
independent development in New Mexican Spanish,
probably from colonial days. This special characteristic
associated with Traditional Spanish is holding on strongly
at present, but the azadón camel has its nose under the
edge of the tent, and experience tells us that it’s only a
matter of time before it takes over the tent.
301
 15-11. ‘Pea’

302 chapter fifteen

 15-12. ‘Belt’

Coming Full Circle 303

 15-13. ‘Hoe’

304 chapter fifteen

 A modern Mexican intrusion that must date from the
Early period shows up as the word for ‘Tin can,’ pictured
in our survey as a can of peas. The most frequently
reported term in our survey is bote, the preference of 164
of the 330 respondents (50%). Following closely behind
in frequency is jarro, the choice of 131 persons (40%). The
third term, lata, is very much a minority variant, being
favored by only 33 consultants (10%).
The geographical distributions of these 3 labels
appear on map 15-14. Lata is the standard Spanish term
for ‘Tin can.’ It can be seen to be slightly associated with
Border Spanish, but it has the wide dispersion character-
istic of labels associated with education. And indeed it
is, as previously demonstrated in table 14-10 for Spanish
classroom experience and table 14-17 for years of educa-
tion in general.
Map 15-14 shows that bote is a Border Spanish vari-
ant that has thrust deeply into Traditional Spanish terri-
tory. Jarro, on the other hand, is clearly the Traditional
Spanish variant, but it has retreated into the hinter-
lands of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
Elsewhere in Spanish jarro usually refers to a ‘pitcher’ or
similar container for liquids. Coincidentally, pichel, the
term for ‘Pitcher’ preferred by 83% of our consultants, also
is restricted to the hinterlands of Mexico, according to
Santamaría (1959). But the evidence of this chapter makes
clear that New Mexican Spanish, like the other dialects of
the Mexican hinterlands, is not impermeable to the influ-
ence of modern Mexican Spanish.
New Nahuatlisms
Some of the forms leaking into New Mexican Spanish as
a result of modern immigration are not just Mexicanisms,
but Nahuatlisms, borrowings from the Aztec language that
seem not to have been present previously in Traditional
Spanish or that must have become established in Mexico
only after the formation of New Mexican Spanish in the
colonial period. An unusual representative of the Early
period is the term for ‘Avocado.’ The 2 most frequently
reported labels are about equally represented (see map 15-15);
45% (150 preferences among 335 respondents) said avocado
and 41% (139 respondents) said aguacate. The former is
pretty much confined to Traditional Spanish areas while the
latter dominates in Border Spanish and is strongly repre-
sented in the Traditional Spanish region as well.
The avocado plant is native to Mexico and Central
America. It comes as no surprise, then, that the agua-
cate form derives from Nahuatl ahuaca-tl and is the label
Coming Full Circle
employed almost everywhere in the Spanish-speaking
world. The avocado label is, of course, the integrated
borrowing of the English form (there were also 5 reports
of nonintegrated avocado). This tropical, fragile fruit
does not grow in the NMCOSS region and was no doubt
first introduced into the territory in its English guise and
only after avocado culture became a viable commercial
enterprise in the United States around 1900 (Root 1980,
18). Of special interest is the fact that this contact of the
2 variants produced 2 other mixed variants: 17 persons
offered avocate, with the English-based beginning and the
Nahuatl-based ending, and 9 persons offered the mixture
in reverse, aguacado.
An example of a new Nahuatlism that probably
entered New Mexican Spanish in the Later period is the
adjective for ‘Spoiled’ as used to refer to an overindulged
child. As can be imagined, the labels for ‘Spoiled’ are
varied. We received 36 distinct words for this item even
though it was skipped over in a number of interviews,
yielding only 285 responses. Only the 3 most frequent
responses are included on map 15-16.
The word chiple for ‘Spoiled’ derives from the Nahuatl
tzipi-tl, meaning “the child who is youngest when a new
sibling is born” (Karttunen 1983). A total of 77 consul-
tants (27%) volunteered this term, and several others
offered closely related forms such as chipleado and chipi-
leado. Map 15-16 shows that chiple is most strongly repre-
sented in the southern part of New Mexico, with scattered
occurrences elsewhere, particularly in Albuquerque and
the Arkansas River areas. This borrowing is conspicu-
ously rare in the rural north, where the most common
term for that concept is echado a perder, which like the
English refers to both literal and figurative spoilage.
Ninety persons (32%) preferred this label.
Lagging far behind with only 19 preferences is the
perhaps most standard term, consentido. We find it only
in the Traditional Spanish area and it exhibits no rela-
tionship to classroom Spanish or level of education. Also
scattered around the Traditional Spanish region but not
included on map 15-16 are 10 responses of chiqueado,
which seems to mean ‘Spoiled’ for some speakers but
simply ‘childish’ for others. A number of the other
terms offered were off the mark as characterizations of
the ‘Spoiled’ notion. For example, 11 persons suggested
malcriado, which might best be translated as ‘brat.’
Another Nahuatlism that has entered New Mexican
Spanish probably in the Later period or perhaps the Recent
period is ejote (from Nahuatl exo-tl) for ‘Green bean’ (also
called string bean and snap bean in English), illustrated in
305
 15-14. ‘Tin can’

306 chapter fifteen

 15-15. ‘Avocado’

Coming Full Circle 307

 15-16. ‘Spoiled’

308 chapter fifteen

map 15-17. This term has a distribution pattern very similar
to that for chiple in map 15-16, but its representation numer-
ically and percentage-wise is slightly lower. There are 59
cases of ejote (18% of 333 respondents), but there are also
another 10 responses of the close variant ijote. As the map
demonstrates, the consultants who cited the 2 forms of this
Nahuatlism are largely representative of the Border Spanish
areas. Those who offered the ijote form show a more tight
restriction to southwestern New Mexico, but they are inter-
mixed with ejote users and the numbers are too small to
read any significance into this distribution, especially since
the ALM did not include this lexical item and the ijote vari-
ant is not mentioned in Santamaría (1959).
On the other hand, the label that characterizes
Traditional Spanish and shows some presence in Border
Spanish is frijol or frijol verde, simply utilizing the exist-
ing word for ‘bean’ and in 3 out of 4 instances adding the
color adjective verde ‘green’ for clarification, just as many
English speakers have done. In all, 239 NMCOSS consul-
tants (72%) preferred the frijol verde and frijol variants.
Although 58 of these responses are the bare frijol with-
out the adjective, no geographical or social differences
between the 2 variants emerge in our data. Consequently
the 2 are combined for display on map 15-17.
We find Nahuatlisms of still more recent entry, as
maps 6-6 for ‘Mosquito’ and 12-6 for ‘Popcorn’ demon-
strated. The geographical distribution of moyote (from
Nahuatl moyo-tl) for ‘Mosquito,’ the choice of 58 persons,
is more limited than those of chiple and ejote. The distri-
bution of esquite (from Nahuatl izqui-tl) for ‘Popcorn,’ the
choice of only 32 persons, is more limited still.
A supposed Nahuatlism showing restricted Border
Spanish distribution is piocha for ‘Chin.’ This item is
interesting in three ways. First is the nature of its status
as a Nahuatlism. Santamaría (1959) proposes an origin
of piocha in the Nahuatl piochtli. Karttunen does not list
this word, but Molina (1571) gives its meaning as
(15-4) cabellos que dejã en el cogote a los muchachos,
quando los tresquilan ‘the hair that they leave
on the nape of the neck of the boys when they
cut off their hair.’
Indeed, Santamaría reports that the meaning of the term
is a small goatee, and he cites another’s proposal of how
the meaning of a tail of hair on the back of the head was
extended to one in the front. And piocha for ‘goatee’ is
commonly used in Mexico today; Lope Blanch (1979, 35–36)
lists this form with this meaning (not the meaning ‘Chin’
as Pedrero 2002, 21 erroneously reports) in his second
Coming Full Circle
group of Indian loanwords, those widely but not univer-
sally known to his sample of Mexico City speakers.
And this leads to the second aspect of interest: the
relationship of chin and beard in Spanish. Barba refers to
both in standard varieties of Spanish. And, in fact, barba
was the most frequently cited term for ‘Chin’ in our survey.
However, it was offered by only a fourth of the respondents
(75 of the 311 persons queried, 24%). It seems that for many
speakers of New Mexican Spanish barba refers exclusively
to ‘beard.’ As reported in table 13-6, over half of our consul-
tants could provide no native Spanish word for ‘Chin’; 21%
resorted to the English word (though often pronounced
as if Spanish, with the tense Spanish value for the vowel)
and 31% elected to provide no term at all. English speakers
may be surprised at such an alarming lexical gap. We have
to have a word for chin. But then, New Mexican Spanish
speakers may find it surprising that English speakers
manage to get by without a specific word for the ‘Back of
knee’; the earlier map 13-2 demonstrates the broad aware-
ness here of the very useful term corva.
Finally, map 15-18 includes only the 2 most common
Spanish words for ‘Chin’ in our survey. Yes, piocha, with
just 22 first choices (8%), is indeed the second most common
term after barba if we exclude English chin. Notice that
this Nahuatlism occurs exclusively in the extreme south of
New Mexico while barba occurs everywhere. Confirming
our findings, Alvar (2000, 187) and Pedrero (2002, 20–21)
report 2 variants for ‘Chin’ occurring only in New Mexico:
2 cases of piocha in the two southernmost localities and 4
cases of chin in the northern part of the state.
In Mexico, the most frequently cited form is barba,
but there are also lots of mentions of barbilla as well as of
the usual word for ‘jaw,’ quijada, which appears promi-
nently in southern Mexico. In the NMCOSS, we tallied 15
cases of quijada and 11 of barbilla. Piocha turns up health-
ily in fourth place in Mexico with just under 50 mentions
but has a restricted, indeed marginalized, distribution.
It is employed prominently along the central west coast
in the states of Nayarit and Jalisco and sporadically on
the northwest coast and in Baja California. This distri-
bution in Mexico may account for its third-place finish
with 15% after barba and barbilla in the Los Angeles study
by Domínguez (1983). However, 3 of the Mexico mentions
came from the state of Chihuahua, just to our south. Thus,
though the Mexico pattern for piocha does not seem to
tie in tightly with the idea of modern immigration, the
distribution in New Mexico makes it pretty clear that this
lexical item made its entrance in the Recent period.
And, finally, an example of a Nahuatlism comes from
the very Recent period. Map 15-19 shows that the standard
309
 15-17. ‘Green bean’

310 chapter fifteen

 15-18. ‘Chin’

Coming Full Circle 311

 15-19. ‘Crow’

312 chapter fifteen

term cuervo is far and away the usual term for ‘Crow’
everywhere in the NMCOSS region, favored by 74% of
the consultants. But an upstart Nahuatlism from modern
Mexico, chanate, makes a very limited appearance in
Border Spanish, having been cited by just 14 persons.
Nahuatl tzana-tl gave rise to both zanate, the more wide-
spread form in Mexico according to Santamaría (1959),
and chanate, the variant favored in northern Mexico (this
item was not a part of the ALM).
However, both Karttunen (1983) and Santamaría
(1959) identify the bird as a grackle (Quiscalus macrou-
rus), not a crow. Perhaps the chanate responses for
‘Crow’ simply represent mistaken identity. After all, the
NMCOSS consultants as a group were not particularly
strong in bird identification; 22 persons simply offered
the nonspecific descriptive phrase un pájaro negro ‘a
black bird’ (unlike the specific English compound black-
bird). Another case of mistaken identity using a specific
label is that 5 persons in the San Luis Valley of the central
Colorado area identified our picture as urraca ‘magpie,’
an omnipresent large black bird in that region. So perhaps
the word chanate is more widely known in New Mexican
Spanish as the term for ‘grackle.’ We don’t know. (But we
do know that this term is more widely used pejoratively
to refer to an African American, a usage documented also
for Texas by Galván and Teschner 1975.)
While this later immigration from Mexico has
brought in a variety of new Nahuatlisms, it has also intro-
duced other lexical items that wind up in competition
with the Nahuatlisms of earlier entry. One example of
this external pressure on the maintenance of traditional
Nahuatlisms is the third variant for ‘Buzzard.’ As shown
before in map 7-9, the standard form aura has the distri-
bution pattern of a very Recent entry from Mexico. It will
now be competing with the early Nahuatlism zopilote and
its alternative form chupilote.
From all these bits of evidence, we conclude that the
Coming Full Circle
principal agent in designing the future of New Mexican
Spanish is the Mexican immigrant. Hear the words of a
thirty-seven-year-old woman from Antoñito, Colorado,
when she was asked if young people there were maintain-
ing Spanish:
(15-5) No. Ya—aquí no. Ya, los jóvenes que aprenden
español ahora, ah, son gente que se casan con
obreros que vienen de California o de Texas, o
de Arizona o de México. Y ya es otro dailéctico
de, de lo que era aquí. So, está cambiando.
Porque está entrando eso. Pus, ya los jóvenes de
aquí ya no tienen la idioma de nuestros viejitos.
Ya, ya, se está acabando. ‘No. Now—not here.
Now, the young people who learn Spanish now,
uh, are people who get married to workers who
come from California or Texas, or Arizona or
Mexico. And it’s already a different dialectic
from, from what was here. So, it’s changing.
Because that’s coming in. Well, now the young
people here no longer have the language of
our old folks. Now, now, it’s disappearing.’
(interview 212)
Immigrants and their children already make up
a substantial portion of the Spanish speakers in the
NMCOSS region. Equally significant, the Mexican
Spanish of these immigrants often represents what is
broadly considered standard Spanish, creating an irre-
sistible force aligned against Traditional New Mexican
Spanish. Thus, the special linguistic fabric that we call
Traditional Spanish, pieced together over four hundred
years, is rapidly unraveling, due not only to the influx of
Mexican immigrants but also to exposure to “educated
Spanish” via formal Spanish instruction, international
travel, and other opportunities to communicate with a
broader range of Spanish speakers.
313
 Chap ter 16
Conclusions
The Dialects and Subdialects of
New Mexican Spanish
• We humans use clothing, hairstyle, body modi-
fications, jewelry, and other external features to
distinguish members of our group from members of other
groups. But one of the clearest and least readily changed
characteristics by which we identify people as belonging
to a different group is how they speak, their dialect. They
sound different, they use distinct vocabulary, they use the
language in unique ways. Why should this be? How does
it happen that people speak the same language in differ-
ent ways?
People who regularly communicate with each other
tend to speak essentially the same dialect. But if a commu-
nity of speakers splits up into distinct groups and there
is little communication across the new group boundar-
ies, differences in speech are likely to ensue eventually.
The development of dialect differences takes place any
time there arises an enduring barrier to communication,
whether that barrier is an ocean or a mountain range sepa-
rating the groups or more easily surmountable obstacles
such as different regions of a country or different parts of a
city, or even different social groups delineated on the basis
of age, education, occupation, ethnicity, and so forth.
Variation arises for internal reasons of linguistic drift,
changes specific to the particular language system that
are induced by such processes as simplification and anal-
ogy. All languages change in this way over time. Variation
also arises for external reasons such as use of language
in social interaction and contact with other languages or
other dialects of the same language. These internal and
external motivations result in changes that can be so great
over time that dialects can evolve to be considered sepa-
rate languages. Thus, the different regional dialects of Latin
eventually became Spanish and French and Italian and
different regional dialects of Germanic became English
and Dutch and Norwegian.
There is, of course, infinite gradation in the speech of
a single community of speakers—the “idiolects” that we
mention in chapter 1. We may speak of dialect only when
we are able to identify specific features that differentiate the
individuals of one group from the individuals of another
group. Moreover, it is not just one feature that distinguishes
one dialect from another but an accumulation of features.
The Spanish language, as one of the world’s major
languages, is used as the primary language for commu-
nication over a vast area. Within this greater Spanish-
speaking world, a Spaniard is easily differentiated from an
315
Argentine or a Cuban by the way he or she speaks Spanish.
Even within nations there are markers that identify specific
regions where a person was raised. A Colombian can read-
ily distinguish on the basis of speech a native of the coast
from a native of the interior, just as a North American can
distinguish a native of Boston from a speaker from Dallas.
Of course, the ability to distinguish such speakers dimin-
ishes to the extent that those individuals have modified
their dialect in the direction of the standard dialect as a
result of education or for other reasons.
As we have pointed out several times, New Mexican
Spanish is “Spanish” because it shares with all other vari-
eties of Spanish many features of lexicon, syntax, morphol-
ogy, and phonology. And it can be considered a part of the
Mexican Spanish “macro-dialect” since it shares many
features (such as numerous Nahuatlisms) with other vari-
eties of Mexican Spanish. But Traditional New Mexican
Spanish is itself a separate dialect within Mexican Spanish
because of many features, mostly lexical, that distinguish
it from those other Mexican dialects. Traditional Spanish
was born of the developing Mexican Spanish four centu-
ries ago, but the barrier to communication created by
distance permitted both independent innovations and the
retention of features that became less common or disap-
peared elsewhere. Contact with other languages, espe-
cially English, contributed further to the accumulation of
a set of features defining a unique dialect.
But we have noted repeatedly in the preceding chap-
ters that there is also considerable variation within New
Mexican Spanish itself. The focus of this chapter is to
draw together those different observations about internal
variation and attempt to identify with some specificity
two distinct dialects and several subdialects within New
Mexican Spanish.
Two Principal Dialects
Already in chapter 1 we demonstrated the important
distinction between Traditional Spanish and Border
Spanish, two dialects within the larger New Mexican
Spanish dialect, and at every turn throughout this book
the difference between these two varieties have been
reaffirmed. Consider now map 16-1, which displays the
preferred terms to label the ‘Stamps’ used for postage.
Again we see that 1 variant characterizes Border Spanish
and another characterizes Traditional Spanish. Estampillas,
the preference of 88 of 331 respondents (27%), occurs prom-
inently across the southern border shared in its west-
ern extension with Mexico and its eastern with Texas. It
occurs also in the western town of Gallup, New Mexico,
316
along the Arkansas River of southeastern Colorado, and
in major cities, especially Albuquerque. Estampillas is an
Americanism brought into the NMCOSS area primarily
through twentieth-century immigration from Mexico. It
is significant that no one offered the peninsular Spanish
standard, sello, though 2 persons chose another common
Americanism, timbre.
In contrast to the Border Spanish preference, the
preferred label throughout the Traditional Spanish region
is estampas, the choice of 213 consultants (64%), or stam-
pas, the choice of 25 consultants (8%). Estampa is a stan-
dard Spanish word meaning ‘print, imprint, image,’ and
seems not to occur elsewhere with the meaning ‘postage
stamp.’ It would appear, then, that estampas for ‘Stamps’
is due to influence of the English word. The responses
of stampas without the initial /e/ also suggests English
influence. However, we would expect the direct borrow-
ing of the English word to be estampes with /e/ not /a/ in
the final syllable, like estrape for ‘strap’ in example 16-1 or
espiche for ‘speech’ in example 16-2:
(16-1) Em papá siempre tenía junto a la puerta uno
de esos estrapes que usaban pa’ amarrar las
navajas de la barba. ‘My father always kept
next to the door one of those straps that they
used to use to sharpen the blades for shaving.’
(interview 41)
(16-2) Siempre tienen que meter los políticos a hacer
un espiche. ‘They always have to bring in a
politician to make a speech.’ (interview 240)
Yet only 4 persons proposed the more expected Anglicism
estampes. As for the absence of the initial /e/, the drop-
ping of this vowel before a consonant cluster like /st/ is
quite common in colloquial speech (e.g., ‘stá aquí for está
aquí). Therefore, the English influence in this case seems
indirect, a kind of calque in which English contributes to
a change in the meaning of a native Spanish word.
The demarcation between the two dialects with
regard to ‘Stamps’ is sharp. To map 16-1 we have added
dividing lines that set off those areas that show majority
use of the Border Spanish variant. The boundary line sep-
arating dialect variants—called an isogloss—is fairly
clear in this case, but it is never neat and clean. A fact
apparent to all linguists is “the seamlessness of language
variation.” As Penny observes, “Each variety merges
imperceptibly with those that are adjacent to it” (2000, ix).
More data in sparsely represented areas might alter the
‘Stamps’ isogloss slightly, or one could quibble over
precisely where we decided to draw this line, but such
chapter sixteen
 16-1. ‘Stamps’

Conclusions 317
changes would be minor. In spite of a certain level of inde-
terminacy, isoglosses represent a useful abstraction from
the linguistic reality, and we will employ it in this chapter
to sharpen our understanding of dialect variation within
New Mexican Spanish.
Consider now map 16-2 for ‘Baking soda.’ A quick
glance at the distribution of the 2 major variants makes
clear again the need to distinguish the two dialects,
Traditional Spanish and Border Spanish. However, the
isogloss we’ve placed on this map is a bit different from
that of map 16-1. The line is farther north on the west
side, and the Arkansas River community lines up with
Traditional Spanish instead of Border Spanish.
A total of 55 consultants (17% of the 330 respondents)
preferred the Border Spanish variant, which was actually
reported in 2 ways: soda de martillo (25 preferences) and
soda del martillo (30 preferences). The 2 are combined
for presentation on the map because their distributions
are overlapping and virtually identical. The source for
this label, which may be translated as ‘hammer soda,’ is
undeniable. It comes from the illustration on the Arm &
Hammer product whose logo was created in 1867 with
“the now familiar hammer-wielding arm of Vulcan, god
of fire” (www.armhammer.com). It is of interest to note
that 6 other persons offered variations on this theme—
arm and hammer, arm-hammer soda, espauda del
martillo, martillo de soda, polvo de martillo, and soda
del brazo (‘arm soda’!)—and all 6 represent Border
Spanish areas. The density with which this label is found
in the Border Spanish areas leads one to suspect that it
is used also in Mexico, at least in northern Mexico, but
unfortunately this item was not included in the ALM
questionnaire.
The Traditional Spanish variant is a more mysterious
form that apparently enjoys long standing in the region.
Already in 1906, E. C. Hills includes salarata in his list of
New Mexican Spanish words that are not part of the speech
of central Spain (1929, 44). The use of salarata (198 tokens,
60%, plus 10 additional cases of salarate) is illustrated in the
following description of how to alleviate a fever:
(16-3) Ponían agua en un vaso y le echaban vinagre
y lo’o le ponían una poquita (de) salarata y
cuando hacía fis, cuando se revolvía, se la daban
a beber y ya se quitaba la calentura. ‘They’d put
some water in a glass and add some vinegar
and then they’d put a little baking soda in it
and when it would fizz, when it was stirred up,
they’d give it to you to drink and it would cure
the fever.’ (interview 142)
318
Where does this word come from? Cobos (2003)
states simply that it derives from Latin sal aeratus
‘aerated salt,’ implying that it is some kind of archaism.
But no such word or close approximation occurs in the
DRAE, the CORDE, or the CREA, nor in Corominas
nor in Santamaría. We perceive two possible sources. A
first hypothesis is that there might have been an original
compound salbicarbonata (sal ‘salt, sodium’ plus the stan-
dard word for ‘Baking soda,’ bicarbonato ‘bicarbonate’).
Rapid speech could progressively reduce this six-syllable
form to the more manageable length of four syllables.
However, a more likely hypothesis is that Cobos was
right about the ultimate source, Latin sal aeratus, but
surprising as it may seem, the immediate source appears
to be English. The Oxford English Dictionary online lists
saleratus (with the alternative spelling of salaeratus) as a
U.S. term for ‘Baking soda’ with the earliest citation from
1837 and all citations only from the nineteenth century.
The Dictionary of American regional English lists the same
word with the same earliest citation but with regional
dialect documentation through the twentieth century.
Old recipes calling for saleratus and comments on its use
are found in McLean (2006, 43) and Luchetti (1993, 27, 57,
141). Luchetti notes, for example, that the list of staples for
a wagon train trip included “saleratus or yeast powders
for making bread” (42). This quote is especially significant
because it cites the English source of two innovations for
baking: saleratus became New Mexican Spanish salarata
‘Baking soda’ and yeast powder became New Mexican
Spanish espauda ‘Baking powder’ (previously mentioned
in chapter 10).
So, salarata is almost certainly an Anglicism
borrowed from English during the territorial period. The
phonological adaptation seems fairly reasonable even
though both the OED and one of the DARE informants
indicate an English pronunciation with /ei/ in the third
syllable, for which an adaptation as salareta would be
more direct, but not one of our consultants offered that
variant. The loss of the final /s/ may be due to interpreting
it as the plural suffix.
Now, to tie down more potently the notion that
Traditional Spanish and Border Spanish are separate
dialects, consider map 16-3. We have placed on this map
the isoglosses just discussed for ‘Stamps’ and ‘Baking soda’
and have added isoglosses for a sample of variables that
were mapped and discussed in earlier chapters. These vari-
ables (which have the contrasting Traditional and Border
variants in the map legend) are ‘Green bean’ (map 15-17),
‘Cabbage’ (map 2-1), ‘Pea’ (map 15-11), ‘Marble’ (map 15-9),
‘Safety pin’ (map 8-8), and ‘Lightbulb’ (map 10-6). You may
chapter sixteen
 16-2. ‘Baking soda’

Conclusions 319
 16-3. Traditional-Border Bundle

320 chapter sixteen

wish to review each of those maps to compare our isogloss
interpretation with your own visualization of the data.
Note that the isoglosses for these 8 variables are close
together. In the south they are exactly parallel on the east-
ern side but show some separation in the west. It can be
anticipated that dialect boundaries will be fuzzy at the
point of contact, unless the barrier to communication
makes it practically impossible for people on separate
sides to communicate with each other. But away from that
boundary—say, Las Cruces versus Socorro—the dialect
differences are crisp for all 8 variables.
The important thing is that these individual isoglosses
form a fairly consistent and quite coherent bundle of
isoglosses. Such a bundle of isoglosses that fit pretty neatly
together is indicative of a dialect boundary. The thicker the
bundle the greater the differences between the dialects.
And this Traditional-Border boundary forms a very thick
bundle if we include the isoglosses for all the other maps
we’ve treated that show this separation. The exploration of
isoglosses, then, is a useful heuristic device and we will use
this means of isolating dialects to assess the existence of
further dialect divisions within New Mexican Spanish.
Subdialects within Traditional Spanish
Río Arriba Dialect
Aurelio Espinosa points out that, within the region that
we call Traditional Spanish, the linguistic variations he
encountered were few and unimportant. However, in his
typically meticulous way he notes (1909, 151) that the New
Mexico region can be divided into two “local dialects”: (1)
Santa Fe and the rest of the north, and (2) the middle Río
Grande Valley from just north of Albuquerque to near
Socorro. This division reflects the historical separation in
colonial days of the río arriba, the upper river (whence
the name of Río Arriba county in northern New Mexico),
and the río abajo, the lower river, roughly displayed as
sectors 4 and 5 of map 3-1 versus sector 6. That histori-
cal distinction remains evident today as the major dialect
division within the Traditional Spanish area.
For example, map 16-4 displays the distribution of
the 3 principal labels for ‘Belch’ used in New Mexican
Spanish. The most widely used label, representing 117
of the 312 responses (38%), is some form of the stan-
dard Spanish eructar, though not one of our consultants
pronounced the word in that classical form. The most
common variant in the NMCOSS region is erutar (59
cases), but there are also 24 preferences of urutar, 19 of
orutar, 11 of irutar, and 4 of eruptar. These 5 variants are
Conclusions
combined for representation on map 16-4. In addition,
there are 8 other more deviant responses (not mapped)
that seem aimed at this general target (e.g., arutar, edutar,
grutar, urupar). Concerning these variations in pronunci-
ation, it is of interest to note that in Mexico and Colombia
too, the dominant variant is erutar and a number of other
variants (such as irutar, arutar, orutar, urutar, and eruc-
tar) are recorded (ALM mapa 779; ALEC vol. 5, mapa 50).
In the usual Border Spanish areas we find strong
representation of another variant repetir, the prefer-
ence of 48 consultants (15%). As we might expect, this
is a feature of Mexican Spanish. Although variants of
eructar represent the dominant form in our neighbor
nation to the south, repetir runs a close second across the
northern half of Mexico. The ALM cites no other vari-
ant of this repetir form. And though this is the version
of the variant that we’ve chosen to place in the legend
of map 16-4, our impression is that the regularized vari-
ant repitir, with /i/ in the second syllable, is the more
common form of the infinitive in New Mexico Spanish.
Since our elicitation yielded many conjugated forms (e.g.,
repito ‘I belch,’ repitió ‘he belched’), it is not possible for
us to provide a quantitative assessment of the preferred
infinitival form.
Finally, in far northern New Mexico and southern
Colorado, the third variant, regoldar, shows up clearly as
the preference of a large majority (excluding, of course,
the Border Spanish area of the Arkansas River). This
term, including 3 cases of resgoldar and 2 cases of regolgar,
accounts for 69 NMCOSS responses (22%). Although the
DRAE treats both eructar and regoldar as standard labels
for ‘Belch,’ Corominas considers the latter to be an archa-
ism, at least in urban areas (1954, 1067). In her analysis
of Southwest data, Pedrero (2002, 16) finds regoldar only
in the NMCOSS region and in the conservative Isleño
dialect of Louisiana. The ALM reports no cases of this
label but does acknowledge 1 case of echar un regüeldo ‘to
emit a belch’ in remote Quintana Roo. The ALEC records
a few cases of regoldar scattered around the country.
The isogloss drawn on map 16-4 separates the regol-
dar-preferring Río Arriba region from the Río Abajo
region that prefers the eructar variants, providing one
bit of evidence for the existence of these two subdia-
lects of Traditional Spanish. The data provided by
Alvar for ‘Belch’ (2000, 189) generally support this divi-
sion although he found a case of regoldar in the remote
community of Monticello in Sierra County of southern
New Mexico.
Displaying a similar division in Traditional Spanish
are the words for a man’s ‘Wallet’ (see map 16-5). The
321
 16-4. ‘Belch’

322 chapter sixteen

4 most common Spanish terms offered by the 324 consul-
tants are bolsa (81 responses, 25%), maleta (76 responses,
23%), cartera (58 responses, 18%), and several variants of
portamoneda (26 responses, 8%). We have not included
on the map for bolsa and maleta a few cases of diminu-
tives (e.g., bolsita) and compounds (e.g., maleta de dinero).
There were also 29 responses of English wallet, 10 of bill-
fold, 9 bolsillo, 6 of billetera, 11 failures to respond, and a
few bizarre contributions.
Standard portamonedas ‘coin purse’ is a compound
composed of the verb portar ‘carry’ and the noun mone-
das ‘coins, money.’ The form of the word varies greatly
in our data since neither element is commonly used with
those meanings in New Mexican Spanish and especially
since this is a long, five-syllable word. In fact, only 7 of
the 26 cases are portamoneda. Another 9 cases are parta-
monera and another 5 are portamonera. In addition, we
received single responses of portamanera, portemoneda,
portemonera, portomanera, and portomonera. Map 16-5
indicates that the distribution of these combined variants
is fairly haphazard although having a modest association
with Border Spanish. Far more typical of Border Spanish
is the use of cartera for ‘Wallet.’
Bolsa for ‘Wallet’ is used widely in the Traditional
Spanish region. But the form preferred in the far northern
area is maleta, which is the general term for ‘Suitcase’ in
standard Spanish. The isogloss imposed on map 16-5 again
separates the Río Arriba region of Traditional Spanish
where maleta is favored. Notice that this isogloss is just
slightly north of that displayed on map 16-4 for ‘Belch.’
This subdivision of Traditional Spanish is strength-
ened by adding the isoglosses for several other variables
previously treated. Map 16-6 adds to the isoglosses for
‘Belch’ and ‘Wallet’ those for ‘Apricot’ (map 5-6) that
generally have albarcoque forms with the second sylla-
ble /a/ preferred north of the isogloss; ‘Mosquito’ (map
6-6) with jején to the north; ‘Shoelace’ (map 7-13) with
mecate and cintilla to the north; ‘Fish’ (map 8-6) with
trucha to the north; and ‘Temple’ (map 11-12) with sentido
to the north. These 7 variables comprise a tight bundle
of isoglosses. For the ‘Shoelace’ variable, mecate is also
the preferred label in Guadalupe County, which lies south
of San Miguel County above which we have drawn the
isogloss. It may be noted that Guadalupe County also has
the Río Arriba variant represented strongly, though in
minority fashion, for ‘Apricot’ and ‘Mosquito.’
The strong bundling displayed in map 16-6 suggests
the existence of a significant subdialect boundary. This
boundary is not nearly as strong as the Traditional-Border
boundary, but it seems significant nonetheless.
Conclusions
North Central Dialect
The far northern and central part of the NMCOSS
region—the central portion of the Río Arriba dialect—
is an area where some speakers use terminology that is
confined to that zone. While the isoglosses corresponding
to these variants are not as extensive as those that iden-
tify the previously discussed dialects, they are common
enough to classify the zone as a subdialect.
Map 16-7 for ‘Attic’ provides a first exemplification of
this dialect. In a country of traditionally flat-roof homes,
an attic is not a concept of long standing having a well-
established conventional label. Nearly a quarter of the 324
persons queried (78 consultants, 24%) offered no response
and another 39 persons settled for the English attic. As for
the responses in Spanish, we received 32 distinct labels, over
half of which were offered by just 1 person and the majority
of which relate to words for ‘roof.’ Map 16-7 displays only
the 5 most common Spanish terms employed.
The most frequently cited term for ‘Attic’ (with 57
responses, 18%) is tejaván, realized in 6 cases as tajaván
(and there were 2 cases of metathesized tevaján, not
mapped). Map 16-7 indicates that this label is distributed
widely across the region, occurring most frequently in the
southern and western areas of Traditional Spanish. Teja
is the general Spanish word for ‘roof tile.’ Cobos (2003)
derives the word tejaván from the standard Spanish
expression a teja vana, which he translates as “with no
more roof than the tiles.” The DRAE does not list tejaván.
But the word occurs in two works of fiction in the CREA
and two twentieth-century works in the CORDE; all are
from Mexico and all seem to refer to a roofed shed (like
the feminine variant tejavana in the DRAE). Cobos gives
only the ‘Attic’ meaning, but L. Trujillo (1983) appears
to indicate that it means ‘roof’ and ‘shed.’ We have also
found tejaván used with the general meaning of ‘roof’ as
in example 16-4 and specifically a pitched roof for some
speakers as in example 16-5:
(16-4) We would get a—la pelota y la tirábanos
arriba del tejaván de un lado pa’ el otro.
‘We would get a ball and throw it over
the roof from one side to the other.’
(interview 116)
(16-5) La casa era de terrón y no tenía tejaván, no
más flat roof. ‘The house was made of mud
blocks and didn’t have a pitched roof, just a
flat roof.’ (interview 2)
The second most frequently cited form for ‘Attic’ is
alto, from the Spanish adjective for ‘high,’ thus referring
323
 16-5. ‘Wallet’

324 chapter sixteen

 16-6. Río Arriba Bundle

Conclusions 325
 16-7. ‘Attic’

326 chapter sixteen

to the ‘high place’ or the ‘heights.’ A total of 44 consul-
tants (14%) preferred this label for ‘Attic,’ which includes
12 responses of arriba del alto. This alternative occurs pre-
dominantly in the southern and eastern parts of the Río
Arriba dialect area.
In third place with 32 preferences (10%) is the form
azotea, usually occurring in abbreviated form as zotea (a
reanalysis in which the a is absorbed into the article, la
azotea > la zotea). This label, cited only as zotea in Cobos
(2003) and only as azotea in L. Trujillo, usually refers to
the roof of a house, and for some speakers it is strictly a
flat roof, though the usage in earlier example 6-9 desig-
nates quite clearly a pitched roof. Thus, the use of this
form may reflect simply a misguided attempt to come up
with a Spanish word for ‘Attic,’ and its scattered distribu-
tion on map 16-7 lends support to such an assumption.
We note, however, that L. Trujillo cites “attic” as a second
meaning of azotea.
Techo is the general Spanish term for ‘roof,’ but 15
consultants offered this variant in responding to the
‘Attic’ stimulus. We might presume with even greater
conviction than in the case of azotea that these speak-
ers responded erroneously. In this case, however, most of
these consultants represent a confined little area in and
around the city of Las Cruces. The possibility that techo
really is a label for ‘Attic’ in that area leads us to include
this variant on the map.
Finally, we come to the label that seems to occur
almost solely in what we are calling a North Central
subdialect. The isogloss drawn on map 16-7 encloses 14 of
the 15 responses of vivienda for ‘Attic.’ Although not cited
in either Cobos or L. Trujillo, vivienda in Traditional
Spanish seems to be the term for ‘floor, story, level’ (or
perhaps simply ‘living quarters’) of a house, as we can
appreciate in examples 16-6 and 16-7 from 2 speakers who
prefer alto for ‘Attic’:
(16-6) Sobre el soterrano hizo una vivienda, de
cocina y tenían una tiendita mediana . . .
y lo’o tenían otra vivienda más arriba, y le
dicían el alto, y ahi tenían los cuartos de
dormir. ‘Above the basement he built one
floor, a kitchen and they had a small shop . . .
and then they had another floor above, and
it was called the attic, and there they had the
bedrooms.’ (interview 142)
(16-7) Teníamos casa de dos viviendas y la vivienda
de arriba le dicíamos el alto. ‘We had a
two-story house and we called the upper floor
the attic.’ (interview 144)
Conclusions
Nevertheless, 14 persons representing the tightly con-
strained geographical region shown on map 16-7 apparently
use vivienda with the meaning ‘Attic.’
A second variable that helps identify this North Central
dialect is ‘Winter cap,’ the knitted, typically woolen head
covering without brim or visor. A total of 81 of 326 respon-
dents (25%) resorted to the label cachucha. This word usually
refers to the baseball-type cap with a visor, which was labeled
cachucha by fully 87% of the NMCOSS consultants. Thus,
it seems that for those who could not access a specific word
for ‘Winter cap,’ cachucha has become a default nonspecific
term to label any head covering that lacks a brim. Such a
manifestation of lexical loss typically displays no geographi-
cal patterning, and map 16-8 shows that these persons are in
fact distributed broadly across the region.
The preferred term for ‘Winter cap’ in New Mexican
Spanish is gorra, the choice of 168 consultants (52%). These
persons too are distributed throughout the NMCOSS
territory, though curiously absent from the far northwest.
By way of contrast, the standard masculine variant gorro
was the choice of only 9 persons, but these 9 cases appear
exclusively in the Border Spanish area.
The third most frequent variant is montera, which
map 16-8 shows to occur only in the north-central part of
the NMCOSS region. The isogloss we’ve drawn encloses
19 of the 21 preferences for this term, and the other 2 cases
lie close outside the isogloss. Montera referring to a head
covering is documented in the CORDE from at least the
sixteenth century and seems to be used today primarily
for the bullfighter’s cap. Cobos (2003) gives two head-
covering meanings for the term: ‘kind of nightcap’ and
‘cloth sunbonnet.’ L. Trujillo (1983), however, whose basis
is the Spanish of the San Luis Valley, identifies montera
as ‘cap, stocking cap.’ The use of montera for ‘Winter cap’
appears to be restricted to this North Central subdialect.
Once again, let us provide a broader range of evidence
to support the existence of this North Central subdialect.
Map 16-9 combines the isoglosses for the vivienda variant of
‘Attic’ and the montera variant for ‘Winter cap’ with those
isoglosses abstracted from several other maps presented
previously. The new isoglosses mark off the North Central
use of noria for ‘Windmill’ (map 7-8), chamuz for ‘Slipper’
(map 9-5), pinate for ‘Peanut’ (map 10-8), ovispa for both
‘Honeybee’ and ‘Wasp’ (map 11-9), and escuelero for
‘Student’ (map 12-5). The bundle of isoglosses formed here
is much looser than the two bundles already discussed, but
it seems clear that a person from the center of this zone—
say, Questa, New Mexico, or San Luis, Colorado—speaks
a slightly different variety than someone from the western
or eastern sectors of the Río Arriba dialect.
327
 16-8. ‘Winter cap’

328 chapter sixteen

 16-9. North Central Bundle

Conclusions 329
Northeast Dialect
What we have called the Río Arriba dialect seems to
have yet another subdialectal division toward the east.
Consider the terms preferred for ‘Clothesline,’ as pictured
with clothes flapping in the breeze and attached to the
line with clothespins. Some consultants offered nonspe-
cific terms such as alambre ‘wire’ (10 responses), cabresto
‘rope’ (6), cordón ‘string, cord’ (4), cuerda ‘cord’ (3), and
línea ‘line’ (28). A few proposed unique creative forms
like secadora solar ‘solar dryer’ and tenderropas ‘clothes-
hanger.’ Another 5 labels for ‘Clothesline,’ however, show
geographical distributions of interest to us. The favor-
ite of the 326 NMCOSS consultants who responded to
this stimulus is percha, the choice of 160 persons (49%).
These persons are spread broadly across the Traditional
Spanish territory except for the northeastern quarter (see
map 16-10).
Another variant, cordel, was the choice of those
persons representing the Northeast (excepting of course
the Border Spanish region along the Arkansas River) as
reflected in a conversational example from one of those
consultants, a seventy-five-year-old woman from Roy:
(16-8) Elisa tenía la maña de colgar ropa en el cordel
los domingos. ‘Elisa had the habit of hanging
out clothes on her clothesline on Sundays.’
(interview 114)
The isogloss presented on the map sets off 44 of the 45
consultants (14% of the total responses) who preferred
the cordel label. These persons represent the upper Río
Grande drainage area and regions to the east, presumably
representing migrations from Taos County into Colorado
as well as into the eastern plains.
The 3 other terms depicted on map 16-10 have lower
frequencies of occurrence. Tendedero, the standard label,
is definitely a feature of Border Spanish. It was the pref-
erence of 27 consultants (8%), though another 4 offered
tendedor and 2 proposed tendedoro. The final 2 vari-
ants are of extremely low frequency but reveal sugges-
tive distributions. The 8 consultants who preferred
hilo, the universal label for ‘Thread,’ are confined to the
Border Spanish area of southern New Mexico. The 7
who preferred cuenda are rural residents of the eastern
Traditional Spanish region.
The second previously undiscussed variable that
we use to illustrate the Northeast dialect area is ‘Syrup,’
illustrated as topping and flowing down the sides of a tall
stack of pancakes. Not 1 of the 336 respondents offered
jarabe or almíbar, 2 forms considered standard. The vast
330
majority (269, 80%) of the 336 NMCOSS respondents for
this item report a preference for the label miel. Miel is
the term for ‘Honey’ in standard Spanish, but it is also
widely used for ‘Syrup,’ even though some may consider
it nonstandard.
Only 1 significant minority variant shows up in our
results: 44 consultants (13%) preferred the label melaz, as
used in the conversational example 16-9:
(16-9) Cuando no tenían melaz de la tienda, mi
mamá lo hacía con azúcar. ‘When they didn’t
have syrup from the store, my mother would
make it with sugar.’ (interview 244)
Map 16-11 shows that these speakers tend to cluster in the
northeastern part of the NMCOSS region. The isogloss
displayed on this map encloses all but 4 of those who gave
this term as their preferred label. Moreover, another 4
persons who offered melaz as a coequal choice after miel
are also representatives of this Northeast region.
Melaz is transparently a shortened form of melaza,
the general Spanish word for ‘molasses.’ Perhaps less
transparent is the fact that melaza is an augmentative
form of miel. This augmentative was once employed
disparagingly to refer to a less desirable type of syrup.
One can imagine that northern New Mexicans in colo-
nial days may have had some difficulty in making syrup
and that the resulting concoction might well have led to
use of the augmentative form as an appropriate label.
On the other hand, we should consider the fact
that miel happens to be the preferred word not only for
‘Syrup’ but also for ‘Honey’ in New Mexican Spanish.
Perhaps because of this ambiguity, over a third of our
consultants—almost all in the Traditional Spanish
area—preferred the compound miel virgen as the label
for ‘Honey.’ Could this ambiguity have played a role
in the adoption of melaz for ‘Syrup’? If speakers of
Traditional Spanish adopted melaz for ‘Syrup’ to avoid
confusion with miel for ‘Honey,’ we would expect the
melaz users to have no need to resort to expanding
the label for ‘Honey.’ But that supposition doesn’t help
explain the current situation. In fact, the melaz users are
more likely to prefer the expanded miel virgen. While
37% overall report miel virgen for ‘Honey,’ 52% of the
melaz users do.
So melaz for ‘Syrup’ is just another one of those curious
lexical features that characterize Traditional Spanish—or
more appropriately, the Northeast subdialect of the Río
Arriba subdialect of the Traditional Spanish dialect of New
Mexican Spanish.
chapter sixteen
 16-10. ‘Clothesline’

Conclusions 331
 16-11. ‘Syrup’

332 chapter sixteen

 A number of other variables have variants that
behave geographically like the ‘Clothesline’ and ‘Syrup’
variants. The isoglosses for 5 are added to map 16-12 to
yield a bundle that suggests the existence of a Northeast
dialect of Traditional Spanish. These variables are
‘Turkey’ (map 4-2), with ganso now largely reduced to the
Northeast area; ‘Goose’ (map 5-4), with ánsara focused in
the Northeast; ‘Mop’ (map 10-3), with the writing inspired
Anglicisms mope and mopa characterizing the Northeast;
‘Quarter’ (map 10-7), with another Anglicism, cuara,
appearing mostly in the Northeast; and ‘Earrings’ (map
13-3), with zarcillos pretty much limited to the Northeast.
As we noted previously in connection with map 7-8, the
use of molino for ‘Windmill’ also is found in this dialect
area. This subdialect is essentially the eastern half of the
Río Arriba dialect, but notice that here the isoglosses for
‘Mop’ and ‘Quarter’ dip more strongly south to include
Guadalupe County just as several isoglosses diagnostic
of the Río Arriba dialect did.
The boundary for this Northeast subdialect is not
clear-cut, as the looseness of the bundle of isoglosses
indicates. Moreover, drawing the individual isoglosses
was much less straightforward than for the Traditional-
Border, Río Arriba, and North Central dialect identifi-
ers. You can appreciate the difficulty if you try your own
hand at depicting the isogloss on each map. Nevertheless,
the results demonstrate that a typical person from the
Northeast (from, say, Trinidad in Las Animas County,
Colorado) speaks a different dialect than a typical person
from the western or southern regions of Traditional
Spanish (for example, a person from Bloomfield in San
Juan County, New Mexico, or from Socorro in Socorro
County, New Mexico).
West Central Dialect
Still less clear-cut but highly suggestive is evidence of a
subdialect area centered to the southwest of Albuquerque.
The ‘Earthworm’ variable provides one such piece of
evidence. Map 16-13 plots the distributions of 5 variants. We
note in chapter 13 (in connection with table 13-16) that the
choice of gusano for ‘Earthworm’ is a nonspecific response
indicative of the attrition of Spanish skills. The map shows
that these consultants (84 of 335 respondents, 25%) repre-
sent all areas of the NMCOSS landscape, though there
seems to be some association with Border Spanish as well
as with growing up in an urban area.
The more appropriate responses using a specific
Conclusions
label relate to the standard form lombriz. However,
only 13 persons responded with exactly this form, and
they too display no geographical patterning. By far the
most widely preferred label in New Mexican Spanish is
a slightly different variant with /u/ in the first syllable,
lumbriz: 198 consultants (59%) offered this variant.
Finally, 9% of the respondents reported a label with
the vowel of the nonstandard variant but with an added
third syllable, lumbricia (26 responses) and lumbriza (5
responses). The consultants who offered a three-syllable
variant are only a small minority but their geographical
distribution is quite constrained. They represent much
of the western half of the Río Abajo, as indicated by the
isogloss that encircles every occurrence of lumbricia and
lumbriza on map 16-13.
Variants of several other variables have restricted
distributions that have some association with this general
area, which we will refer to as the West Central region. On
map 16-14 we have added the isoglosses for 4 additional
variables treated previously: ‘Trunk’ (map 7-11), ‘Crumbs’
(map 9-2), ‘Pancakes’ (map 9-3), and ‘Socks’ (map 5-5). In
comparison to the lumbriza/lumbricia for ‘Earthworm’
isogloss, guayabes for ‘Pancakes’ has far fewer mentions
(just 14) and extends farther to the east, but most of the
cases are in the core of the West Central region. Moreover,
there were 4 other persons who mentioned guayabes as
other than their preferred term, and all 4 are from smack-
dab in the middle of the area delineated: 1 from Magdalena,
2 from Monticello, and 1 from Rincón. The distribution of
petaca for ‘Trunk’ extends primarily from Albuquerque to
the west, but with scattered cases elsewhere that are associ-
ated with higher education and direct contact with Mexico,
where petaca occurs prominently. Cunques for ‘Crumbs’
occurs across the southern half of the NMCOSS area, but it
is dominant in the core of the West Central region. Finally,
the use of escarpines for ‘Socks’ is rare, but the 7 cases occur
exclusively in this subdialect area, as do 4 other mentions as
a coequal choice and 1 case of the mixed form escarcetines
from an elderly man who was ill and had difficulties with
pronunciation.
The evidence summed up in map 16-14 points to an
area of some linguistic unity, but it doesn’t reveal a dialect
with sharp boundaries. What we see seems to be the
remnants of a dialect. It may be that in earlier times there
existed a coherent West Central dialect of Traditional
Spanish identifiable by a tighter bundling of isoglosses.
But the display on our map makes it apparent that the
bundle has begun to suffer serious unraveling.
333
 16-12. Northeast Bundle

334 chapter sixteen

 16-13. ‘Earthworm’

Conclusions 335
 16-14. West Central Bundle

336 chapter sixteen

Subdialects of Border Spanish
The impression that may have been gleaned, perhaps
subconsciously, from the many maps and extended discus-
sions of this book is that Border Spanish is quite uniform.
In contrasting Border Spanish with the much greater varia-
tion in Traditional Spanish, this impression is valid and a
natural consequence of the more recent formation of Border
Spanish. But Hispanics have been present in southern New
Mexico since the colonial period, probably since the Pueblo
Revolt of 1680 forced the New Mexico colony south to the
El Paso–Juárez region. Mines were developed in the vicin-
ity of present-day Silver City (Grant County) beginning “as
early as 1790” (Williams 1986, 117). Spanish land grants were
made in Sierra County in 1820 and Doña Ana County in
1823 (Williams 1986, 105–6). After the Mexican-American
War of 1848, a number of speakers of Traditional Spanish
abandoned northern New Mexico to return to Mexican
territory below where Las Cruces is located today. Layered
on top of these earlier settlements is the majority that derive
from modern immigration from Mexico.
So this diversity in the area’s cultural history, however
slight, can be expected to be manifested in some degree of
linguistic variation today. That variation does seem slight,
however. The only variation that seems consistent enough
to suggest a subdialect boundary concerns the southwest-
ern side of Border Spanish. Let us illustrate first with the
words for a traditional woman’s leather ‘Purse’ provided
by 320 NMCOSS consultants.
As noted previously, there are 4 principal terms
for a man’s ‘Wallet’ (map 16-5), and 3 of those terms are
the principal terms for the functional equivalent on the
woman’s side. Bolsa is the most frequently used label
in both cases, but the proportions are quite different. It
accounts for only 25% of the responses for ‘Wallet,’ but
64% (204) of the responses for ‘Purse.’ In second place
on the preference list with roughly the same frequency
in both cases is maleta: 23% for ‘Wallet’ and 25% (81) for
‘Purse.’ Balancing the equation is cartera, the first choice
of 18% for ‘Wallet’ but only 6% (19) for ‘Purse.’ Finally,
the fourth ‘Wallet’ term was used by only 2 persons for
‘Purse,’ 1 partamonera and 1 portamonera.
Map 16-15 for ‘Purse’ is similar to map 16-5 in show-
ing the association of maleta with the Río Arriba variety
of Traditional Spanish and cartera with Border Spanish.
However, cartera for ‘Purse’ is characteristic of a very
limited area of Border Spanish: from Doña Ana County
west, as indicated in the isogloss we’ve added to the map.
Is there a Southwest dialect of Border Spanish?
Possibly. The isoglosses for 4 other variables are added
Conclusions
to that for ‘Purse’ on map 16-16. The distributions of tirador
for ‘Slingshot’ (see map 5-10) and craca for ‘Cracker’ (map
10-9) are virtually identical to that of cartera for ‘Purse,’
and like cartera are absent from the eastern Colorado and
Gallup areas of Border Spanish. Similar are the isoglosses
we’ve drawn for ‘Throw rug’ (map 8-7) and ‘Belt’ (map
15-12), with tapete and cinto, respectively, being character-
istic of the Southwest dialect. These 2 variants, however,
have broader occurrence, but with less density, in the other
regions of Border Spanish.
This bundle of isoglosses is sufficient linguistic
evidence to endorse the notion of a Southwest subdia-
lect of Border Spanish. And the sociohistorical situa-
tion bolsters this conclusion. The area identified by this
subdialect is precisely the region that is closest to the
Mexican border. Moreover, all of the variants except
craca that are characteristic of this subdialect are charac-
teristic of Mexican Spanish today. This Southwest subdi-
alect of Border Spanish, then, is a consequence not only
of modern immigration but of continuing close contact
with Mexico.
There are suggestions of other subdialects of New
Mexican Spanish in our data, but the evidence is too
limited to take seriously. For example, the distribution of
azadón on map 15-13 for ‘Hoe’ hints at a possible Southeast
dialect of Border Spanish that overlaps with the more
clearly delimited Southwest dialect. The vagueness of the
evidence for any other subdialects is further confounded
by the turmoil of the transitory period through which
New Mexican Spanish is now passing, a topic to which
we must now turn at the end of this book.
Prospects for the Future
Aurelio Espinosa published a semipopular article just
before New Mexico was granted statehood in which he
reported that the Traditional Spanish of his research
“remains to-day as it was brought here in the XVIIth
century, a Spanish linguistic monument, which no influ-
ence or power can ever destroy” (1911, 8). He simply could
not have imagined the awesome influence and power
that would be brought to bear against this dialect in the
succeeding decades.
The decades since World War II have been a particu-
larly tumultuous period for New Mexican Spanish, which
has suffered powerful influences on one side from English
and on the other from Mexican Spanish. The increas-
ingly intimate contact with English has had a substantial
impact on the vocabulary of the local Spanish. That is fine.
337
 16-15. ‘Purse’

338 chapter sixteen

 16-16. Southwest Bundle

Conclusions 339
That is not a problem. Such change only heightens the
distinctiveness of the dialect. The devastating influence
of English is manifest in what is called “subtractive bilin-
gualism,” the kind of bilingualism that “reflects a society
where one language is valued more than the other, where
one dominates the other, where one is on the ascendant
and the other is waning” (Edwards 1995, 59). It leads to the
diminution of skills in Spanish and eventually complete
abandonment of the ethnic heritage language.
At the same time that young Hispanics are failing
to acquire Spanish, the elderly speakers of New Mexican
Spanish are dying off. And as the speakers of Traditional
Spanish disappear, they are being replaced, at least to
some extent, by immigrants from Mexico, speakers
of Mexican Spanish. Thus, for example, the use of the
Mexican Spanish repetir for ‘Belch’ increases from just
6% of the Older generation to 29% of the Younger gener-
ation. Moreover, the young people who do manage to
develop and maintain Spanish fluency are increasingly
influenced by standard Spanish as a result of experiences
in the Spanish language classroom.
The effect of these two trends—Mexicanization and
standardization—is the loss of forms such as vestido for
‘Suit,’ túnico for ‘Dress,’ ratón volador for ‘Bat,’ rosas for
‘Popcorn,’ dos reales for ‘Quarter,’ frezada for ‘Blanket,’
pariagüe for ‘Umbrella,’ and ganso and gallina de la tierra
for ‘Turkey’—forms that give such a special flavor to
the Traditional Spanish dialect of New Mexico and south-
ern Colorado.
To add a few more logs to the evidential pyre, let’s
consider first the terms for ‘Moth’ presented on map
16-17. The universal standard label is polilla, and this is the
preference of the NMCOSS majority (184 of 328 respon-
dents, 56%). Notice the distribution of this variant in New
Mexican Spanish. It obviously has been entrenched in the
Traditional Spanish area for centuries.
But a universal standard cannot stand up against
the pervasive Mexican Spanish influence. The distribu-
tions of the other 3 terms for ‘Moth’ make it obvious that
they are imports from Mexico. Mariposa is the standard
Spanish term for ‘Butterfly’ (though the compound mari-
posa nocturna is generally accepted as an appropriate term
for ‘Moth’); only 8 consultants preferred this variant, a very
recent immigrant in the Border Spanish area. But the other
2 labels, paloma (42 preferences) and its diminutive palomita
(32 preferences) have spread their wings broadly in southern
Border Spanish and deep into the Traditional Spanish terri-
tory. The more usual meaning of paloma, in New Mexican
Spanish and universally, is ‘Dove’ or ‘Pigeon.’
340
Making the matter still more confusing for New
Mexican Spanish speakers is the fact that in Traditional
Spanish, paloma and palomita are often used for reference
to a butterfly, not a moth. Overall, 43% of the NMCOSS
consultants offered one of these labels for ‘Butterfly.’ We
showed in table 14-17 that the use of standard mariposa is
associated with education, though it is also strongly char-
acteristic of Border Spanish.
In the case of ‘Strawberry,’ the Traditional Spanish
variant is in still greater danger of being supplanted by the
Border Spanish variant that is also the standard variant.
A picture of plump, red strawberries elicited the response
of standard fresa from 130 out of 334 respondents (39%)
and mora from 96 (29%). What? But isn’t mora a mulberry
or blackberry? Well, yes. It is in New Mexican Spanish
too. But as Cobos observes, “In New Mexico and south-
ern Colorado moras are berries (mulberries, blackber-
ries, strawberries, etc.)” (2003, 154). L. Trujillo (1983), too,
reports that mora refers to both mulberries and strawber-
ries. So we might guess that at some point the mora term
was generalized to include strawberries, which have some
superficial resemblance to mulberries and blackberries.
But wait! A secondary meaning for mora in the DRAE
is fresa silvestre ‘wild strawberry.’ In fact, Corominas
(1954) tells us that the now standard label fresa was
adapted from French only when the strawberry began to
be cultivated intensively in the seventeenth century. The
CORDE shows only 2 cases of fresa with a strawberry-like
meaning in the 1600s and the Davies corpus shows cases
appearing only in the 1700s. It seems very likely, then,
that the early settlers in New Mexico from the beginning
used mora to refer to the wild strawberries that grow
here. It is of interest to note that among other words for
‘Strawberry’ are the related terms morangana, used in the
Canary Islands (Corrales Zumbado, Corbella Días, and
Alvarez Martínez 1992), and morianga, used in the Isleño
Spanish of Louisiana that derives from settlement by
Canary Islanders (MacCurdy 1975, 502). Map 16-18 shows
that current NMCOSS users of mora for ‘Strawberry’ are
speakers of Traditional Spanish from more rural areas.
However, that Traditional Spanish lexical item
is now being overwhelmed by the standard fresa. One
hundred and thirty consultants (39%) prefer this label,
and another 9 came close with fresca (5 cases), fresco,
frese, and fresna. This import from Mexico, with ardent
support from classroom Spanish (see table 14-10), rules
almost exclusively from the southern border up through
Albuquerque and is chipping away at the last strongholds
of Traditional Spanish.
chapter sixteen
 16-17. ‘Moth’

Conclusions 341
 16-18. ‘Strawberry’

342 chapter sixteen

 But it’s not just Mexican Spanish that is chipping
away here. Almost as many consultants as gave a mora
response (29%) could provide no Spanish word at all
(27%): 74 persons responded with English strawberry
and 17 declined to offer any response. We documented
previously that the use of mora declines sharply among
younger speakers (table 12-2) and that diminished levels
of Spanish proficiency are associated with the need for
a prompt to come up with a label for ‘Strawberry’ (table
13-14) and with inability to respond to this stimulus (table
13-8). The constantly accelerating shift from Spanish to
English in the course of the twentieth century is the truly
pernicious force in the demise of Traditional Spanish.
The twin forces of English and Mexican Spanish
become even more powerful when the reference is to
items having little historicity. Consider, for example, the
very common product developed in the last century for
the purpose of calming babies, the ‘Pacifier.’ A label for
this new product had to be found. In English the label was
created by derivation from verbs representing the sooth-
ing function of this device, from pacify (> pacifier) in the
United States and from comfort (> comforter) in Great
Britain. Some of the principal options in Spanish were
formed also by derivation. For example, in Mexico (ALM
mapa 949): from the verb chupar ‘suck’ we find chupador,
chupeta, chupete, and chupón, and from mamar ‘nurse,
suckle’ we find mamadera, mamila, and mamón. But the
form that has won out overwhelmingly in all parts of
Mexico is chupón.
Chupón is also the most frequently cited form in the
NMCOSS results, with 95 responses (29%). Map 16-19
reveals, as we should expect, that chupón is a feature of
Border Spanish. There were also 13 tokens of chupador—
which the random distribution on the map indicates
to be a homegrown and unsuccessful attempt at word
coinage—as well as 9 chupete, 4 chupadero, 3 chupa-
dora, 2 chupero, and 1 token each of chupadera, chupar-
rón, chupetón, chupetera, chupilón, and chupillo. While
Mexican Spanish has narrowed the chupa- forms down to
4, New Mexican Spanish has 12. Speakers of New Mexican
Spanish have just as much skill in deriving appropriately
formed new words. But the social glue needed to reach
agreement on a common form is lacking. The major
Spanish language option has been to adopt the solution
reached by agreement in Mexico.
But Hispanics in the NMCOSS did, in fact, have
another solution, namely, to expand the meaning of the
word for the real thing. A total of 60 consultants responded
using the word teta ‘tit,’ and map 16-19 demonstrates that
Conclusions
this solution is a feature of Traditional Spanish. Of this
total, 40 consultants offered the bare teta and 4 the dimin-
utive tetita while others resorted to compounds: 14 teta seca
‘dry tit,’ 1 teta de aigre ‘air tit,’ and 1 teta de hule ‘rubber tit.’
No such forms are documented in the ALM.
A similar solution is to adopt the related derived
form tetera, which like teta is more commonly used in
New Mexican Spanish to label the ‘Baby bottle’ used to
feed a baby. Ranking third as a Spanish language label for
‘Pacifier,’ it was the choice of only 18 persons, including
1 who gave the diminutive teterita and 5 who preferred
masculine tetero. These speakers are randomly distrib-
uted around the Traditional Spanish region.
The final solution, of course, is to provide no Spanish
word at all. A total of 89 consultants (27%) made this
choice (indicated as “loss” on map 16-9), placing them-
selves in a dead-heat competition with the 95 who chose
the Mexican Spanish option. In this loss category, there
were 29 persons who offered no response at all and 60
who gave only an English response, almost always paci-
fier. In addition, 9 consultants tried to create Spanish
words based on the English form (pacífico, pacifante,
pacificador, and pacivador).
We see again that the ties that once bound speakers
of New Mexican Spanish together as a linguistic commu-
nity have been torn asunder, making them unable to effec-
tively address a new phenomenon linguistically, unable
to reach a consensus internally at either the dialect or
subdialect level. Into this vacuum English and Mexican
Spanish flow easily.
The NMCOSS project has caught an important view
of the Spanish language as it exists in New Mexico and
southern Colorado today. With that information we have
attempted, through this dialect atlas, to bring an under-
standing to the complexity of variation hidden behind the
word “Spanish” (or “mexicano”) in this region. We cele-
brate all the dialects spoken in the survey area and would
hope to see all of them forge brightly into the future. But
that is wishful thinking.
The future of New Mexican Spanish seems clear. The
social forces that will shape this future are now set firmly
in place. Spanish is no longer consistently transmitted
to successive generations. The children and grandchil-
dren of today’s Spanish speakers grow up with little or no
command of the language. If they do manage to develop
Spanish skills through interaction with their peers, it is
apt to be colloquial Mexican Spanish because Spanish-
speaking peers tend to be immigrants and the children
of immigrants, an ever more dominant proportion
343
 16-19. ‘Pacifier’

344 chapter sixteen

of the young people who claim to be Spanish speak-
ing. Alternatively, exposure to the language tends to be
limited to the classroom and perhaps through travel or
other contacts with mainstream varieties of Spanish.
Thus, we have every reason to expect that the Tradi­
tional Spanish of New Mexico will undergo the dialect
extinction that has already befallen the Traditional
Spanish of other southwestern states. Within another
Conclusions
couple of generations, the unique New Mexican Spanish,
to the extent that the language is spoken at all, will have
been reabsorbed by its “mother tongue,” Mexican Spanish.
In brief, it is entirely likely that the archive formed from
the language knowledge shared by the 357 consultants to
our project will be one of the few manifestations left of
Traditional Spanish fifty or a hundred years from now.
345
Appendix
The NMCOSS Consultants
Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
1 52 F Tomé, NM Romero, Betty
2 56 M Tomé, NM Romero, Jacobo
3 52 F Corrales, NM Velarde, Delilia P.
4 80 F Embudo, NM Archuleta, Josefina
5 63 M San José, Albuquerque, NM Apodaca, Anthony Joseph
6 82 M El Bonito, NM Gonzales, Canuto
7 82 M Chamisal, NM Domínguez Rodríguez, José Amado
8 78 M La Bajada, NM García, Tranquilino
9 28 F Tomé, NM Romero, Rosemarie
10 88 F Ensenada, NM Espinosa, Patrocinia
11 76 M Magdalena, NM Pino, Ricardo Amado
12 60 F Blanco, NM García, Ruby F.
13 29 M Aztec, NM García, Joe P.
14 51 F La Puente/Tierra Amarilla, NM
15 39 M Chamita, NM
16 36 M El Cerro, NM
17 29 F Albuquerque, NM
18 38 M Aztec, NM Flores, Abel Ernesto
19 29 M South Valley, Albuquerque, NM Ulibarrí, Charles Duane
20 82 F San Cristóbal, NM Ortega, Elvira A.
21 48 M San José, Albuquerque, NM Córdova, Antonio
22 71 M Wagon Mound, NM Martínez, Salomón
23 51 F Deming, NM Arrey, Tina
24 77 F Tomé, NM Martínez, Sophie J.
25 41 F Llano Quemado, NM
26 21 M Santa Fe, NM Kelly, Pablo A.
27 79 M Clayton, NM Vigil, Flugencio
28 51 M NE Heights, Albuquerque, NM Montoya, Robert P.
29 27 M El Valle, NM Romero L., Franklin
30 55 M Antoñito, CO García, José
31 21 F Las Vegas, NM
32 34 M South Valley, Albuquerque, NM Jaramillo, Joseph M. (José Miguel)

347
Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
33 21 F Sunland Park, NM Cervantes, Olga
34 20 F Tomé, NM Medrano, Rebecca
35 43 M La Puente, NM Trujillo, Mike
36 25 F Córdova, NM Montoya, Dessie
37 40 M Las Quebraditas, NM Sánchez, David
38 46 M Antoñito, CO Velásquez, Ricardo S.
39 23 M North Valley, Albuquerque, NM Pérez, Ignacio
40 61 M Magdalena, NM Trujillo, Antonio José
41 56 M Córdova, NM Córdova, Herminio
42 68 F NW Valley, Albuquerque, NM Gutiérrez, Theodora
43 34 M Pastura, NM Romero, Bazán José
44 73 F Armijo, Albuquerque, NM Martínez, Gertrudes J.
45 40 M Chamisal, NM Córdova, Adrian
46 49 M Center, CO Martínez, Frank Roberto
47 54 F Sawmill, Albuquerque, NM Ramírez, Rita
48 62 F Sevenmile Plaza, CO Luján, Josephine
49 34 M San José, Albuquerque, NM Lozoya, Mario
50 74 M San Luis, NM
51 82 F Pintada, NM Ellis, María Concepción “Pearl”
52 52 F Anthony, NM Schwartz, Mary Grace
53 39 F Armijo, Albuquerque, NM Fernández, Evelyn
54 75 F Rodey, NM Córdova, Mónica Silva
55 56 F Barelas, Albuquerque, NM
56 70 F Sevenmile Plaza, CO Sandoval, María Isabel “Betty”
57 52 F Atrisco, Albuquerque, NM
58 56 M Pueblo, CO Trujillo, Daniel
59 77 F Center, CO Martínez, Lydia
60 86 F Trinidad, CO
61 70 M Trinidad, CO Sandoval, Joe B.
62 61 M Durango, CO Rivas, Amado
63 29 M Santa Rosa, NM Maestas, Lawrence
64 69 F Caballo, NM
65 43 M Magdalena, NM Leyba, Jake
66 78 F La Mesa de los Chupaina, NM Tapia, Ida
67 45 F Española, NM Aguilar, Lorraine
68 69 F Manzano, NM
69 47 F Mountainair, NM Campbell, Marie M.
70 58 F Guadalupe, Albuquerque, NM Armijo, Rosemary G.
71 71 M Albuquerque, NM
72 76 F Roswell, NM Trujillo, Aída
73 66 F Los Padillas, Albuquerque, NM Silva, Annie García

348 appendix • The NMCOSS Consultants

Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
74 35 M Roy, NM
75 62 F Roy, NM
76 74 F Cañón de los Yutas, NM Gonzales, María Jesusita Lovato
77 63 F Carriso, NM Sánchez, María Martínez
78 77 F Nara Visa, NM Gonzales, Matilda Vigil
79 61 M Santa Fe, NM Romero, R. Tom
80 75 F Wagon Mound, NM Portillo, Viola M.
81 87 F Abiquiu, NM Espinoza, Vicente
82 22 F Anthony, NM Hernández, Vicky Longoria
83 55 M Santa Rosa, NM
84 38 F Center, CO LeBlanc, Luella
85 64 M Colonias, NM Maestas, Manuel
86 49 F Peñasco, NM
87 51 M El Güique, NM Martínez, Ralph
88 45 M Martínez, Albuquerque, NM
89 57 F Las Vegas, NM
90 38 F Bueyeros, NM González de Archuleta, Rebecca
91 44 F Chamisal, NM López Frésquez, Annabelle
92 46 M North Valley, Albuquerque, NM Sisneros, Richard F.
93 81 F Maxwell/Ratón, NM
94 39 M Santa Fe, NM Aragón, Maximiliano
95 44 M La Cueva, NM Maez, Ricardo A.
96 78 F Peñasco, NM Alarid, EutiliaM.
97 51 F Río Lucio, NM Griego, Orphelita Gurulé
98 38 M Santa Fe, NM Gonzales, Lorenzo
99 62 M Fort Sumner, NM Barela, Juan Elías
100 58 F Trujillo, NM Roybal, Helen
101 37 F Algodones, NM Rodarte, Alicia U.
102 48 M Chamisal, NM García, Maximiliano
103 34 F Española, NM Márquez, Norma B.
104 19 M Taos, NM
105 32 F Barelas, Albuquerque, NM
106 42 F Mountainair, NM Zamora, Gloria
107 56 M Trujillo, NM Esparsen, Albert
108 83 F Santa Fe, NM Gonzales Thomas, Anita
109 77 M Clayton, NM Gonzales, William Petrolino
110 42 F Santa Fe, NM N/A, Jewel
111 73 F Arroyo Colorado, NM Luna, Margarita
112 51 M Central, NM Luna, Fred R.
113 37 M Gallup, NM Bustamante, Herman
114 75 F Roy, NM Ulibarrí, Pauline G. Gonzales

349
Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
115 79 M Manzano, NM
116 58 F Manzano, NM
117 62 F Bernalillo, NM Domínguez, Laura
118 59 M La Loma, NM Mondragón, Fr. Antonio
119 44 M Capitán, NM García, Gene
120 31 M Las Cruces, NM Lomas, Nicolás
121 53 F Magdalena, NM
122 40 F Pueblo, CO Maestas, Sandi
123 52 F Abiquiu, NM Esparsen, Mary Julia Carolyn Medina
124 62 F Sevenmile Plaza, CO
125 41 M Silver City, NM
126 27 M Las Vegas, NM Ulibarrí, John
127 48 F San José, Albuquerque, NM Candelaria, Jessie M.
128 67 F Algodones, NM Escarcida, Angie
129 44 F Algodones, NM Cleveland, Martha Isabel Escárcidad
130 22 F Anthony, NM N/A, Angélica
131 49 F Carlsbad, NM Chacón, Nicolasa V. “Nickie”
132 54 M Loving, NM Chacón, Francisco Alemán
133 32 F Carlsbad, NM Villa, Dorothy R.
134 33 M Carlsbad, NM Pérez, Freddy R.
135 86 F Carlsbad, NM
136 65 F San Francisco de Oro, Mexico
137 79 F Silver City, NM
138 77 M La Mesa, NM
139 26 F Las Cruces, NM Alarcón, Patricia
140 24 M Mesilla, NM
141 42 F La Mesa, NM
142 80 F El Valle, NM
143 55 F San Mateo, NM Barela, Evangelina O. “Vangie”
144 83 M El Valle, NM Romero, Epifanio
145 50 M Pecos, NM Tanuz, Bill A.
147 66 F Rodarte, NM Martínez, Carolina M.
148 60 F Center, CO
149 21 F Las Cruces, NM Leza, Margarita E.
150 40 F Wagon Mound, NM
151 52 F Chama, NM
152 29 F Los Griegos/Duranes, Albq., NM García, Lisa M.
153 23 F Las Vegas, NM García, Lori Lynn
154 41 M Questa, NM Ortiz, Lawrence A.
155 44 F Truth or Consequences, NM Torres McWilliams, Sylvia
156 73 M Costilla, NM De Herrera, Valdemar

350 appendix • The NMCOSS Consultants

Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
157 38 F Cerro, NM Herrera, Pauline
158 36 F Del Norte, CO Félix, Monica
159 93 F Questa, NM
160 41 M Texico, NM Ortiz, Manuel Guadalupe
161 67 F Gallup, NM Esparza, Marina
162 85 M Alamo, NM Chávez, José Inez
163 58 F Capitán, NM Peralta y Chávez, Dorotea “Dora” Silva
164 70 M Trinidad, CO
165 68 M Avondale, CO Montour, Joe
166 45 F Ignacio/Center, CO LaVold, Bessie
167 67 M Rocky Ford, CO Reyes, Henry
169 43 F Deming, NM Holguín, Rosie T.
170 26 F Deming, NM
171 68 F Columbus, NM Casillas, Apolonia
172 34 M Deming, NM
173 70 M La Luz, NM García, Albert M.
174 78 M Las Cruces, NM Apodaca, Juan G.
175 49 F Las Cruces, NM Escalante, Victoria O. “Vickie”
176 61 F Mesilla, NM Apodaca, Margaret G.
177 51 F Las Cruces, NM Gibson, Victoria E.
178 66 M Mesilla Park, NM
179 54 M Tortugas, NM Nevárez, Roberto S.
180 57 F Mesilla, NM Aranda, Frances
181 31 F Tortugas, NM
182 52 F Alamogordo, NM Shoaf, Lucy Lucero
183 21 F Alamogordo, NM Gómez, Alma Angelina Cardiel de
184 61 M Alamogordo, NM Meléndrez, Raymond
185 35 F Truth or Consequences, NM
186 46 F Truth or Consequences, NM Knull, Linda Chávez
187 91 M Dilia, NM Aragón, Frank P.
188 60 M Vaughn, NM Durán, Arsenio
189 72 F Vaughn, NM García, Ernestina
190 71 M Tucumcari, NM Abeyta, Louis
191 67 F Socorro, NM Tafoya, Odelia C.
192 58 F Socorro, NM Peralta, Fidelia Lorraine
193 62 F Bernalillo, NM Heine, Sandra
194 64 M Cortez, CO Gómez, John H. “Juan”
195 60 F Durango, CO
196 69 M Trujillo, CO Gallegos, Ben A.
197 78 F Los Brazos, NM
198 64 M Rinconada, NM Romero, Joe T.

351
Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
199 63 M Bloomfield, NM Montoya, Seledón F.
200 55 M Pagosa Springs, CO Maestas, Fridolín H. “Floyd”
201 64 F Pagosa Springs, CO Dauguaard, Margaret Archuleta
202 21 M Gallina, NM Chacón, Freddy Narciso
203 55 M Dexter, NM Salas, Orlando
204 74 F San Antonio, CO Velásquez, Ester Crucita López
205 86 M Mogote, CO Martínez, José Manuel
206 84 F Antoñito, CO Alfaro, Estela
207 38 M San Luis, CO Salazar, Arnold
208 27 F Bernalillo, NM Rinaldi, Michelle
209 23 F La Jara/Cuba, NM Crespín, Geraldine
210 88 F La Ceja, NM Gonzales, Pablita Archuleta
211 78 M Chama, CO Vialpando, Lázaro
212 37 F Antoñito, CO Valdez, Frances J.
213 50 F Saguache, CO López, Lorraine M. García
214 76 M Ojo Feliz, NM Hernández, Felipe
215 75 F Cleveland, NM Parsen, Marie Chacón
216 74 M Old Town, Albuquerque, NM Durán, Cleto N.
217 83 F San Mateo, NM Salazar, Carlota
218 53 M Grants, NM Salazar, Ross J.
219 96 F Chamita, NM Martínez, Agueda S.
220 23 F Mora, NM Branch, Cindy
221 27 M Cleveland, NM Maes, Carlos
222 55 F Mora, NM
223 55 M Red Hill, NM Orona, Frank
224 75 M Cokedale, CO
225 72 M Aguilar, CO Coca, Francisco
226 22 M Aguilar, CO Coca, Adán Miguel
227 55 F Socorro, NM Ríos, Telesfora S.
228 76 M Rincón, NM Ríos, Feliciano C.
229 63 F Cheraw, CO Vásquez, Enriqueta
230 44 M San Cristóbal, NM Vigil, Ronnie
231 69 F Questa, NM Rael, Rose
232 36 M Chimayó, NM Ortiz, Lloyd Aaron
233 71 M La Junta, CO Ocañas, Manuel
234 64 F Valdez, NM Rael, Cecilia
235 57 F Gallup, NM Chávez, Anita
236 90 F Talpa, NM Griego, Guadalupe Tafoya
237 45 F La Junta, CO
238 45 M Embudo, NM Arellano, Juan Estevan
239 67 M San Antonio, NM Gonzales, Antonio José, Jr.

352 appendix • The NMCOSS Consultants

Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
240 68 M Armijo, Albuquerque, NM Sánchez, Orlando E.
241 73 M Alameda, NM Gurulé, Epifanio
242 58 F Mogote, CO Taylor, Orlinda García
243 38 F Sargent, CO Ortega, Shirley M.
244 52 F Pueblo, CO
245 73 M La Valley, CO Martínez, “Max” (Maclovio)
246 76 F Las Tablas, NM
247 19 M Vaughn, NM Chávez, Aaron Jeffrey
248 38 M Del Norte, CO LeBlanc, Jerry
249 52 M Las Cruces, NM Apodaca, Juan D., Jr.
250 88 M Frisco, NM Jirón, Abe
252 69 M Datil, NM Sánchez, Abrán
253 46 M Cruzville, NM Lucero, Pete L.
255 85 F Pintada, NM Silva, Viviana Maldonado
256 69 M Artesia, NM Roblero, Prudencio Paz
257 49 M Roswell, NM Gonzales, Paul H.
258 66 M Roswell, NM
259 81 M Lincoln, NM
260 80 F Santa Rosa, NM Romero, Amalia Maestas
261 73 M Garfield, NM Gonzales, Santiago “Jim”
262 69 M Tinnie, NM Trujillo, Tony
263 21 F Dexter, NM Elías, Anna María
264 47 F Lake Arthur, NM Gonzales, Olivia Ramírez
265 54 F Hagerman, NM Reid, Olivia Gómez
266 60 F Clayton, NM Martínez, Bernice
267 34 F Clayton, NM Earle, Frances L. Maynes
268 43 F Clayton, NM Craine, Gloria
269 52 M Clayton, NM Gonzales, Thomas G.
270 87 M Mangas, NM Baca, Eliseo
271 79 M Alamo, NM Silva, Noverto
272 95 F Santa Rosa, NM Padilla, Julia
273 82 M Clayton, NM Montoya, Severo
274 94 F Bueyeros, NM
275 70 F Monticello, NM González, Vidal T.
276 21 M Roswell, NM Jaques, Nieves
277 25 F Arrey, NM Cardona, Amanda Bencomo
278 56 F Truth or Consequences, NM Ortega, Dolores Aguirre
279 59 M Bernalillo, NM Baros, Arturo “Arthur” Marcelino
280 75 F Lasauses (Los Sauces), CO Valdez, Olivama
281 38 M Antoñito, CO Pacheco, Casimiro F. “Casey”
282 49 F Cebolla, NM Medina Maez, Loretta

353
Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
283 67 M Bernalillo, NM Rinaldi, Justin B.
284 64 M San Luis, CO Pacheco, Rubén
285 41 M Los Huertes, CO Manzanares, A. Charles
286 51 F San Pedro, CO Sánchez, Rose F.
287 70 M Las Animas, CO Saldaña, Silverio
288 46 M Vaughn, NM
289 41 F Vaughn, NM
290 24 F Vaughn, NM Durán, Brenda E.
291 58 M La Puente, NM Ulibarrí, Ernesto Ramón
292 27 M Grants, NM López, Gary
293 69 M Gibson, NM Esparza, John G.
294 60 M Gallup, NM Estrada, Howard G.
295 47 F Socorro, NM Padilla, Margaret R.
296 41 F San Rafael, NM Leyba, Evelyn
297 61 F San Luis, CO Vigil, Teresa B.
298 73 F San Pablo, CO Medina, Sister Mary Concetta
299 33 F Chama, CO Medina, Juanita
300 68 F Ordway, CO Córdova, Frances “Quica”
301 73 F Rocky Ford, CO Apodaca, Anastacia
302 50 F Rocky Ford, CO Maes, Joan
303 18 F Rocky Ford, CO Gabriel, Alexandrina
304 51 M Pueblo, CO Ortega, José Esteban
305 77 M Rocky Ford, CO Masias, Joe P.
306 66 F Springer, NM Pacheco, Josephine Gallegos
307 67 F Ratón, NM LeDoux, Susana “Susan”
308 83 M Maxwell, NM Valerio, Fidel
309 46 M Ratón, NM Chávez, Gerald B.
310 81 F Alameda, NM Walker, Manuelita Hernández
311 90 M Dixon, NM Arellano, Adolfo Sr.
312 25 M Rocky Ford, CO Reyes, Lucio
313 85 F Las Animas, CO Estrada, Engracia
314 70 F Pueblo, CO Rivera, Blasa
315 81 F Wagon Mound, NM
316 79 F Gallina, NM
317 52 F Mancos, CO Martínez, Soledad “Sally” Julianita
318 72 F Cortez, CO Martínez, “Lela” (Deleria)
319 61 F Alamogordo, NM Maez, Rufina M.
320 81 F Hobbs, NM Zapata, María
321 82 M Amalia, NM Gallegos, Martín
322 52 M Cuba, NM
323 82 M Las Vegas, NM Silva, Andrés

354 appendix • The NMCOSS Consultants

 Int. # Age Sex Location Name (where permission granted)
324 81 F Watrous, NM Martínez, Eslinda
325 57 F Cuba, NM May, Esther Córdova
326 66 F Artesia, NM Acosta, Isabelle
327 36 F Lovington, NM Leyva, Belén
328 74 M Alamogordo, NM Noriega, Santiago Pérez
329 15 F Lovington, NM Leyba, Rosella E.
330 68 M Truth or Consequences, NM Tafoya, Pánfilo A.
331 75 F La Jara, NM Olivas, Angelita G.
332 18 F Roswell, NM Benavides, Sandra
333 84 M Silver City, NM Morales, José Tranquilino
334 47 F Silver City, NM Terrazas, Rachel G.
335 40 F Silver City, NM Quiñones, Isabel Castillo
336 70 F Truth or Consequences, NM Chacón, Virginia L.
337 67 M Silver City, NM Rivera, Emilio Z.
338 65 M Santa Rita, NM Morales, Ygnacio B.
339 49 M Tucumcari, NM Gutiérrez, Ezequiel A.
340 36 F Walsenburg, CO
341 67 F Pueblo, CO Montour, Betty Ann Martínez
342 66 F Truth or Consequences, NM Candelaria, Matilde “Tillie”
343 32 F Aguilar, CO Coca, Rebecca
344 39 M Truth or Consequences, NM Jirón, Charles Elmer
345 88 F near Gardner, CO
346 73 M Walsenburg, CO Córdova, Adolfo
348 42 M Tucumcari, NM Martínez, Juan “Johnny”
349 26 M Clovis, NM Córdova, Samuel
350 79 F Magdalena, NM
351 47 F Clovis, NM Gutiérrez, Belvina
352 37 F Clovis, NM
353 60 M Santa Rosa, NM Rubio, Antonio A. “Tony”
354 73 F Clovis, NM
356 60 M Chise, NM Ortega, “Nick” (Nicolás)
357 74 F Arrey, NM Chávez, Lucía B.
358 96 F Monticello, NM Jirón, Tomasita A. Aragón de
361 18 M Ledoux, NM Trujillo, (Joseph) Fidel, Jr.
363 77 F Belén, NM Quintana, Precilla A.
364 72 M Pueblitos, NM Armijo, Celso
365 51 F Bosque, NM Montaño, Claudine
366 54 M Belén, NM Sais, Arturo R

355
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Index of Spanish Words

This index includes only those words cited in the text that are documented in the NMCOSS, including variants that
are pronounced as in English and cited in boldface. It does not include, however, proper names and words occurring
only in the conversational examples. We also exclude many minor phonological variations as well as all non-systematic
distortions and idiosyncratic forms that are discussed in the text with respect to the more typical forms listed herein.
Maps are indicated with M, tables with T.

abanico, M7-8, 108 amarrar, M6-1, 76, 78 balloon, T14-5, 267, 269, 288
abeja, M11-7, M11-9, 201, 204 ancón, 76 balún, M15-3, T14-5, T14-17, 180, 267,
abrigo, T14-17 andar en la trucha, 133 285, 288
abrochar, M6-1, 76, 78, 194 ankle, T14-16, 207 banana, T14-10
acequia, 62 ánsara, M5-4, T12-2, M16-12, 34, banco, 295
actor(a), T14-17 58–59, 333 baño, 105
actriz, T14-17 aretes, M13-3, T13-18, 254 barba, M11-14, M11-15, M15-18, 210,
adobe, 62, 140, 295 armánica, T12-18, 237, 239 212, 309
aeroplano, M12-4, T12-11, 227–28 armónica, T12-18, 237, 239 barbas, 210
afeitarse, T14-10, T14-17, 270 aroplano, M12-4, T12-11, 228 barbilla, 309
aguacate, M15-15, 1, 305 arracadas, M13-3, T13-18, 254, 333 barco, M6-4, 82
agujeta, 118, 206 arrear, M8-9, 137, 197, 218 barro, 95
aiscrim, M12-7, 180, 235 arroz, 62 bat, T12-4, T13-5, T13-7, 143, 219,
asientos, M9-11, 55 221, 246, 248
ajolote, 40, 112
asina, 64 bate, T12-4, T13-5, T13-7, 143, 219, 221
alambre, 330
atar, 76, 78 baúl, 116
albarcoque, M5-6, M16-6, 62, 64, 323
atole, 96 bicicleta, T14-10, T14-12, 273
albaricoque, 62
attic, 323 bicycle, T14-12, 273
albercoque, M5-6, 62, 64, 257
aura, M7-9, 108, 313 biscuit, M10-11, 183
albericoque, 62
autobús, T14-10, T14-17 bísquete, M10-11, 183, 190
alcojol, 149
avión, M12-4, T12-11, T14-10, T14-17, bizcochito, M10-10, T12-17, 183,
alfombra, M8-7, 135
227–28 186, 235
algodón, 62
avispa, M11-7, M11-8, M11-9, 201, 204 bizcocho, T12-17, 186, 235
almendras, M8-5, T12-2, 130, 133
avocado, M15-15, 305 bloomers, T12-6, 223–24, 248
almohada, 62
azadón, M15-13, 301, 337 blouse, 56
almuerzo, T14-10, T14-17, 52, 194, 270
azotea, 327 blusa, M5-2, T14-10, 54, 56, 295
alto, M16-7, 323
bola, 299
alumno, M12-5, T12-12, T14-10,
baica, T14-12, 273 bolita, M1-2, T12-2, M15-9, M16-3, 5,
228, 231
295, 299
alverjón, M1-2, M15-11, M16-3, 5, baicicleta, T14-12, 273
bollito, T12-17, 235
13, 301 balde, T15-4, M15-6, 293, 295

367
bolsa, M16-5, M16-15, 323, 337 canoba, M6-5, 82, 84 chiple, M15-16, 305, 309
bolsillo, 323 cañute, 86 chiqueado, 305
bomba, 285, 288 capulín, 96 chiva, 194
bootie, 164 cárcel, 151 chocolate, 96
borrega, M11-1, 192, 194 caribe, 82 chopo, M9-5, 162, 164
bos, T14-10 carne, 151 chortes, T12-5, 221
bote, T14-10, T14-17, T15-4, M15-6, carpa, 92 chota, 217
M15-14, 293, 305 carpeta, M8-7, 135 choza, 104
bragueta, 194 carro, 137 chúntaro, 13
brecas, T14-10, T14-17, M15-4, 37, 288 cartera, M16-5, M16-15, M16-16, chupador, M16-19, 343
brel, 157 323, 337 chuparrosa, M11-2, T12-2, 39, 194
brincar, 97 casa de corte, 37 chupete, 343
breque, 288 cascada, T14-10, T14-17 chupilote, M7-9, T12-2, 108, 112, 313
broche, M8-8, M16-3, 135, 137 casi, 15, 32, 183, 224 chupón, M16-19, 343
buho, 15, 99 casita, 99 ciempié(s), M8-4, 128, 130
buñuelos, 157 cavador, M15-13, 301 cientopié(s), 128, 130
cazar trucha, 133 cinta, M7-13, 118, 204
cabello, M11-14, M11-15, M13-1, T13-15, cera, 130, 176 cintilla, M7-13, M16-6, 118, 323
210, 212, 251, 253–54 cerdo, T14-10, T14-17 cinto, M15-12, M16-16, 301, 337
cabellito, 210 cerilla, 130 cintopié(s), 128, 130
cabra, 194 cerillo, M10-4, 173, 176 cinturón, M15-12, 301
cabresto, 330 chabacán(o), M5-6, 62, 64, 299 cisterna, M15-10, 299
cacahuate, M8-5, M10-8, 39, 80, 96, chalupa, M6-4, 84 clima, 217, 261, 279
133, 180 chamacos, 124 clin, M13-1, T13-15, 251
cachucha, M16-8, 327 chamuz, M9-5, M16-9, 162, 327 cobija, M10-5, 64, 176
cafeses, 160 chamuza, 162 cócano, M4-6, 31, 42–43, 216–17
caiba, 66, 74 chanate, M15-19, 313 cocer, 194
caite, T12-8, 108, 226 chancla, M9-5, 164 cochino, T14-10, T14-17, 127
cajete, M7-5, 95, 105 chango, T14-10 cócono, M4-5, M4-6, 31, 40, 42–43,
calcetines, M5-5, 59, 62, 164, 288, 295 chante, M7-4, 102, 104, 164 88, 95, 204, 216–17
calcos, 59 chapulín, M7-1, 15, 96–97, 102 col, M2-1, T15-2, M16-3, 14–15, 291
calor, T14-11, 272 chaquegüe, 155 colcha, M10-5, 135, 176
calzoncillos, M12-2, T12-5, T12-6, chato, 194 colgar, 194
221, 223–24
chavalos, 124 colibrí, M11-2, 194
calzones, M12-2, M12-3, T12-5, T12-6,
cherife, 37 colmena, 201
221, 223–24
chícharo, M1-2, M15-11, M16-3, 5, colorado, M13-4, T13-21, T14-1, T14-2,
cama, M8-10, 140
13, 301 258, 263–64
camalta, M8-10, T12-2, 140
chiche, 96 comal, M9-4, T12-2, 95, 104, 160,
camión, M10-1, 170 162, 218
chicos, 124
camioneta, M10-1, 170 consentido, M15-16, 305
chicote, M6-3, 39, 78, 80
camisa, 56 cookie, 237
chiflar, 52
canal, M6-5, 84 copa, M11-5, T14-10, 197
chile, 15, 80, 96
canaleja, 86 cordel, M16-10, M16-12, 330
chile de perro, M8-12, T12-2, 143
canica, M1-2, M15-9, M16-3, 5, cordón, M7-12, M7-13, 116, 118,
chin, 309
295, 299 206, 330
chinela, 164
canilla, T13-17, 207, 254 cormena, M11-7, 201, 204
chinito, 291
canoa, M6-4, M6-5, 82, 84, 86 correa, M7-13, 118

368 index of spanish words

correcaminos, T14-17 dientista, 272 estampas, M1-2, T14-10, M16-1,
corva, M13-2, T13-17, 194, 253, 309 diez (centavos), M12-1, T12-3, 219 M16-3, 5, 316
coser, 194 dipa, M7-6, 105, 173, 176 estampes, 316
coyaye, 155 dipper, 105 estampillas, M1-2, T14-10, M16-1,
coyote, 94, 96 discípulo, M12-5, T12-12, 228, 231 M16-3, 5, 316
cozo, M11-3, 194 doctor, M8-14, 149 estógamo, T14-10, 140, 270
craca, M10-9, M16-16, 180, 183, 337 dólar, T14-17, M15-1, T15-1, 285 estómago, T14-10, 140, 270
craque, M10-9, T12-17, 180, 183, don, doña, 13 estrape, 316
190, 235 donde, 15 estudiante, M12-5, T12-12, 228, 231
creiba, 74 dos reales, M10-7, T12-14, T13-20, 176,
creiban, 15 232, 258, 285, 340 faja, M15-12, 301
crin, 251 dotore, M8-14, 149 falda, M6-9, T12-10, T14-0, T14-17,
Crismas, M14-2, T14-4, T14-17, 264 durazno, 52 89, 92, 227, 299
Crismes, M14-2, T14-4, T14-17, 171, fil, 116
264, 267 earrings, T13-18 fistol, M8-8, 137
cuadra, M14-3, 267 echado a perder, M15-16, 305 flate, 15, 168
cuara, M10-7, T12-14, T13-20, M16-12, ejote, M15-17, M16-3, 305, 309 flete, 76
180, 232, 258, 279, 333 elote, 80, 96, 194 fletero, 76
cuarta, M6-3, 80 empelotarse, 291, 293 foco, M10-6, M16-3, 176
cuasi, 15, 32 empeloto, M15-5, T15-3, 291, 293 fondo, M6-8, 89, 92
cuate(s), M7-2, 15, 39, 97, 99, 102, 192 empiezar, 54 fone, 168
cubeta, T15-4, M15-6, 293, 295 enagua(s), T12-10, 88–89, 227 fósforo, M10-4, 173, 176
cubo, T15-4, M15-6, 293 enchinarse, 291 frenos, T14-10, T14-17, M15-4, 288
cuello, T14-10 enchufe, 170 fresa, T14-10, M16-18, 340
cuenda, M16-10, 330 encuerarse, 291, 293 frezada, 340
cuerda, 330 encuerado, M15-5, T15-3, 291, 293 frijol, 1, 52, 309
cuero, T14-10, T14-17, 64 enfermera, T14-10, T14–17, M15-2, 285 frijol verde, M15-17, M16-3, 309
cuerpo, M5-2, T12-2, T14-10, 54, 56, enhebrar, 52, 194, 248
58, 295 galleta, M10-9, M10-10, M10-11,
enojar, 52
cuerpoespín, M8-3, T12-2, 127–28 T12-17, 157, 180, 183, 235, 237
ensartar, T13-12, 52, 194, 248
cuerpoespino, M8-3, 127–28 galletita, T12-17, 183, 235
entierrar, 54
cuervo, M15-19, 313 gallina, 32–33, 42
eroplano, M12-4, T12-11, 228
cuezo, M11-3, 194 gallina de la tierra, M4-1, T4-1, T4-2,
erutar, M16-4, 321
cuilta, M10-5, 176 T4-3, T12-1, 31–34, 137, 216–17, 340
escarpines , M5-5, 62, 333
cunques, M9-1, M9-2, 155, 157, 197, 333 ganso, T4-1, T4-2, M4-2, T4-3, M5-4,
escuela, 228 T12-1, M16-12, 15, 31, 34, 36, 58–59,
cuque, M10-10, T12-17, 183, 190, 237
escuela alta, 37 130, 216–18, 261, 333, 340
cuqui, M10-10, T12-17, 183, 237
escuelero, M12-5, T12-12, M16-9, garra, 135
228, 231, 327 garrapata, 194
daime, M12-1, T12-3, 171, 219 escuro, T14-10, T14-17 gemelos, M7-2, 97–99, 192
dende, 64 espalda, T14-10 globo, M10-6, T14-5, T14-17, M15-3,
dentista, T14-0, T14-17, 272 español, 12 M16-3, 176, 267, 285, 288
desayuno, T14-10, T14-17, 52, 270, 277 espauda, 170, 318 gorra, M16-8, 327
desnudarse, 291 espelma, 130 gorro, M16-8, 327
desnudo, T15-3, M15-5, 291, 293 espinazo, T14-10 grano, 143
despertar, M5-1, 54 esquite, M12-6, T12-15, 232, 234, 309 grasshopper, 248
desvestirse, 291 estafeta, 64 gris, M14-5, T14-10, T14-15, 275, 277
diente, 272

369
guajalote, T4-1, T4-2, T4-3, M4-4, jamón, T14-10, T14-17 maleta, T14-10, T14-17, M16-5, M16-6,
T12-1, 31, 40, 112, 216 jarmánica, T12-18, 237, 239 M16-15, 218, 323, 333
guajolote, T4-1, T4-2, T4-3, M4-4, jarmónica, T12-18, 237, 239 mamases, T14-11, T14-20, 128, 272
T12-1, 31–32, 39–40, 42, 46, 95, jarro, T14-10, T14-17, M15-14, 305 Mana, Mano, 13
112, 216 mane, T13-15
jediondo, 69
guarache, 164 maneas, T14-10, M15-4, 288
jején, M6-6, M16-6, 86, 95, 323
guayabes, M9-3, 157, 333 manejar, M8-9, 137
jerga, M8-7, 135
güíjalo, T4-1, T4-2, T4-3, M4-5, M4-7, manguera, M15-7, 295
jerguita, 135
T12-1, 31, 43, 78, 204, 206, 217
jervir, 69 manijar, M8-9, 137
gusano, T13-15, M16-13, 253–54, 333
jonda, M5-10, 69, 72 Manita, Manito, 13
jongo, 72 mapa, M10-3, 171, 173
ha, T8-1, T8-2, M8-13, T14-11, 146,
joso, M8-1, 69, 124 mape, M10-3, 171, 173
148, 217
juellas, 72 mapeador, M10-3, 173
hacerse la barba, 270
juir, 69 mariposa, T14-17, M16-17, 194, 340
haiga, 66
jumate, M7-6, 105, 173 maroma, M6-2, 78
hamos, T14-11, T14-20, 146, 217, 261
jumo, M5-11, T14-10, 72, 74, 218 marometa, M6-2, 78
harmonica, T12-18, 237, 239
marrano, T14-10, T14-17, 127
he, M8-13, T14-11, 146, 217, 272
kite, M7-7, T12-8, 108, 226 mateo, 13
helado, M12-7, T12-16, T14-8, T14-14,
235, 269–70, 275 mayor, 37
hemos, T14-11, T14-20, 146, 217, 272 ladybug, 248 mecate, M7-12, M7-13, M16-6, 116,
lagaña, 64, 194 118, 206, 323
hermana, 13
lagartijo, 112 mecha, M10-4, 173, 176
hermano, 13
lago, T14-10, T14-17 medias, M5-5, 59, 62
hilo, M16-10, 194, 330
laguna, T14-10, T14-17 médico, 149
honda, M5-10, 69, 72, 124
lancha, M6-4, 82, 84 melaz, M16-11, M16-12, 330
hongo, 72
lata, T14-10, T14-17, M15-14, 305 mercar, 52, 64
horno, M9-4, T12-2, 160, 162
leche nevada, M12-7, T12-16, T14-8, mesmo, 32, 64, 74
hotcakes, M9-3, 157
T14-14, 234–35, 269, 275 mestro, M14-1, T14-3, 264
huellas, 72
lechuza, M7-3, 99 metate, T12-2, 118, 120
hues(it)o sabroso, M11-10, M11-11,
T14-16, 206–7, 272 legaña, 64, 194 mexicano, 7, 12, 14, 343
hummingbird, 194 levantarse, 54 mexicano de México, 13
humo, M5-11, T14-10, 72, 74, 218 línea, 330 miel, M16-11, 330
lodo, T14-10, 201 miel virgen, 330
ice cream, M12-7, T12-16, T14-8, lombriz, M16-13, 253, 333 migajas, M9-2, 157
T14-14, 234–35, 237 lonche, 194 milpa, 116
íchite, M7-12, 116, 118 los = nos, 145 Mis Crismes, 171
idioma, M14-6, M14-7, T14-11, T14-18, lumbricia, M16-13, 253, 333 mitote, 104
T14-19, 140, 272, 279 lumbriz, T13-15, M16-13, 253, 333 mitotear, 104
idomia, M14-7, T14-18, 140, 279, 282 lumbriza, M16-13, 253, 333 mitotero, 104
ijote, M15-17, 309 mocho, 247
ir a la trucha, 133 machicueta, M6-2, 78 mojado, 18
irutar, 321 machucar, 52 molcajete, 118, 120
maestro, M14-1, T14-3, T14-17, 264 molino, M7-8, 108, 333
jacal, M7-4, 102, 104 maistro, M14-1, T14-3, 264 monete, M16-8
jalar, 76 maíz, 82, 194, 232 mono, T14-10
jallar, 69 malcriado, 305 montera, M16-8, M16-9, 327

370 index of spanish words

mopa, M10-3, 171, 173, 333 ovispa, M11-7, M11-8, M11-9, M16-9, perla, 151
mope, M10-3, M16-12, 171, 173, 333 201, 204, 327 perrilla, M8-12, 143, 299
mopeador, M10-3, 173 pescado, M8-6, 133, 295
mora, T12-2, T14-10, M16-18, 340, 343 pacifier, 343 pescar, 133
mosco, M6-6, 86, 88, 210 pader, 15, 140 pescuezo, T12-2, T14-10
mosquito, M6-6, 86, 88, 95 paisano, T12-2, T14-17 peseta, M10-7, T12-14, T13-20, 180,
moyote, M6-6, M6-7, 86, 88, 94–95, paloma, T14-17, M16-17, 340 232, 258, 288
204, 207, 299, 309 palomita, T14-17, M16-17, 340 peso, M15-1, T14-17, T15-1, 284–85
muchachos, 124 palomitas, M12-6, T12-15, 232, 234 petaca, M7-11, 113, 333
muchitos, M8-2, 124, 127 pancakes, M9-3, 157 petaquilla, M7-11, T12-2, 113, 257
murciégalo, T12-4, 140, 143, 219 panqueques, M9-3, 157, 170 pez, M8-6, 133
murciélago, M8-11, T12-4, T13-5, T13-7, pantaletas, T12-6, 223–24 pica, M7-10, 113
T14-10, T14-17, 15, 34, 140, 143, 219, pantalones, 223–24 picaflor, 194
246, 257, 299 pantes, M12-3, T12-6, 223–24 pícap, 170
música de boca, M12-8, 237, 239 panties, M12-3, T12-6, 223–24, 248 pichel, 305
musiquita de boca, M12-8, T12-18, pantis, T12-6, 223–24 pickup, 170
237, 239
pantufla, M9-5, 164 pico, M7-10, 113
papa, 92 piedra, 118, 120
nagua(s), M6-8, M6-9, T12-10, T14-10,
papalote, M7-7, M7-8, T12-8, 39, 105, piel, T14-10, T14-17, 64
T14-17, 15, 88–89, 92, 227, 299
108, 130, 226 pieses, T14-20, 128
nagua(s) de abajo, 89
papalotito, 108 pinate(e), M8-5, M10-8, M16-9, 133,
Navidad, M14-2, T14-4, T14-17, 171,
papases, T14-11, T14-20, 128, 160, 272 180, 327
264, 267, 284
paraguas, T14-10, 257 piocha, M15-18, 309
nicle, 171
paragüe, T12-2 pisca, 95
nieve, M12-7, T12-16, T14-8, T14-14,
135, 261, 269–70, 275 pardo, M14-5, T14-10, T14-15, 275, 277 piscar, 95
niggershooter, M5-10, 72 pariagüe, T12-2, 340 pisito, 135
niños, 124 partamonera, 323, 337 piso, M8-7, 135
nixtamal, 94 parte, M11-4, 180, 197 pisquear, 95
nodriza, T14-10, T14-17, M15-2, partida, 197 plátano, T14-10
257, 285 partido, M11-4, 197 plebe, M8-2, 124, 127
noria, M7-8, M15-10, M16-9, 108, partidura, M11-4, 197 ploga, 170
299, 327 pastel, M10-12, 186 plogue, 170
-nos, 145 pata, 128 plomo, M14-5, T14-10, T14-15, 275,
nueces, M8-5, 130, 133 pato, 58 277, 299
nuez, 133 pavo, T4-1, T4-2, T4-3, T12-1, 31, plug, 170
46–47, 217, 262 pocho, 247
obeja, 201, 204 pavón, T4-1, T4-2, T4-3, T12-1 polecía, 217
o(b)scuro, T14-10, T14-17 pelito(s), 210 policía, 217
olla, T15-4, M15-6, 293 pelo, M11-15, M13-1, T13-15, 210, 212, polilla, M16-17, 340
onde, 15 251, 253–54, 291 popcorn, M12-6, T12-15, 180, 232,
oquéi, 168 pelota, 291 234, 237
oroplano, M12-4, T12-11, 228 pene, M10-13, 171, 186, 190 portamoneda, M16-5, 323
orutar, 321 peni, M10-13, 171, 186 portamonera, 323, 327
oshá, 15, 155 pentes, T12-6, 223–24 posole, 96
oso, M8-1, 69, 124 pentis, T12-6, 223–24 pozo, M15-10, 299
oveja, M11-1, 192, 194, 201 pepenar, 95 praying mantis, 248
percha, M16-10, 330 presente, T14-10, T14-17

371
prieto, 52 salarata, M16-2, M16-3, 318 taza, M11-5, T14-10, 197
principal, 37 santo, 128 techo, M16-7, 327
probe, 140 santopié(s), M8-4, 15, 128, 130 tecolote, M7-3, 15, 80, 95, 99, 102
profesor, M14-1, T14-3, 264 sartén, M9-4, 160, 162, 299 tegua, 164
puchear, 168 seguro, M8-8, M16-3, 137 tejaván, M16-7, 323
puedemos, 54 seigo, 66 telefón, M14-4, T14-10, T14-13, 37,
puela, M9-4, 15, 160, 162, 197, 218, 299 semos, 66 273, 275
puerco, T14-10, T14-17, 127 sentido, M11-12, M11-13, T12-7, T13-13, telefono, M14-4, T14-13, 275
puercoespín, M8-3, 127–28 M16-6, 207, 210, 224, 250, 323 teléfono, M14-4, T14-10, T14-13, 273,
serumato, 13 275, 284
quarter, T12-14, 180, 232 shainear, 94 temple, 210
quelites, 15 shaque, M7-4, 102, 104 temple, T12-7, T13-13, 210, 224
queque, M10-12, 186, 190 shortes, M12-2, T12-5, 221 templo, M11-12, T12-7, T13-13, 180, 207,
shorts, T12-5, 221, 224 210, 224, 250
quequi, M10-12, 186
sien, M11-12, M11-13, T12-7, 207, 210, tenaza, M8-8, 137
querer, 257, 272
224, 250, 295 tenacita, 137
quijada, 309
silla, T14-17, M15-8, 295, 299 tendedero, M16-10, 330
silleta, T14-17, M15-8, 295 tenedor, 194
rancho, 22, 76
sintido, T12-7, T13-13, 207, 224, 250 tener de, 66
rasurarse, 270
slingshot, 72 terque, M4-3, T4-1, T4-2, T4-3, T12-1,
ratone, 15, 149
slipper, 164 37, 217
ratón volador, M8-11, T12-2, T12-4,
so, 168 teta, M16-19, 343
T13-5, T13-7, 15, 34, 140, 143, 197,
219, 246, 340 soda de martillo, M16-2, M16-3, 318 teta seca, 343
raya, 197 sopaipilla, 52 tetera, M16-19, 343
recordar, M5-1, 52, 54, 58 stampas, M16-1, 316 tina, M7-5, 95, 105
recuerdar, 54 strawberry, 343 tíquete, 170
reditir, 140 subadero, 135 tirador, M5-10, M16-16, 72, 337
regalo, T14-10, T14-17 sudadero, 135 tobillo, M11-11, T14-10, T14-16,
206–7, 277
regla, M14-3, T14-6, T14-17, 267, 284 suelo, 135
tocino, T14-10, T14-17
regoldar, M16-4, M16-6, 321 suera, M10-2, T14-7, T14-17, 171,
267, 269 torque, M4-3, T4-1, T4-2, T4-3, T12-1,
relámpago, 194
31, 37, 102, 167, 217
repetir, M16-4, 321, 340 suéter, M10-2, T14-7, T14-17, 171,
267, 269 tosaye, 155
repollo, M2-1, T15-2, M16-3, 14–15,
suiche, 170 trabajare, 149
291, 293
suit, M10-14, 186, 190, 231 traiban, 74
reque, 180
surumato, 13 traje, M5-3, M10-14, T12-13, 56, 58,
requear, 168
186, 231
resoltera, 72 sute, M10-14, T12-13, 186, 190, 231, 261
trajeron, M5-9, 32, 68–69
resortera, M5-10, 72 sweater, M10-2, T14-7, 171, 267, 269
trajieron, M5-9, 68–69
resurarse, 270 switch, 170
trajo, T14-11, 15, 46, 272
rodilla, T13-17, 254
trapeador, M10-3, 173
rojo, M13-4, T13-21, T14-1, T14-2, 258, tacuache, 94
traque, 137
262–64, 284 tacuche, 232
trasquilar, M11-6, 197, 201
ropa de abajo, 223 talache, M7-10, 113
trayeron, M5-9, 69
rosas, M12-6, T12-15, 232, 234, 340 talacho, M7-10, 113
tresquilar, M11-6, T12-2, 197, 201
rula, M14-3, T14-6, T14-17, 267, 269 talón, 207
tripa, M15-7, 295
ruler, T14-6, 267, 269 tamal, 15, 96
troca, M10-1, 37, 76, 168, 170, 190, 192
tapete, M8-7, M16-16, 135, 337

372 index of spanish words

trocón, 170 vido, T13-22, T14-11, T14-20, 32,
trocota, 170 66, 258
troque, M10-1, 168 vio, T13-22, T14-11, T14-20, 32, 66,
troquita, 168, 170 258, 272
trucha, M8-6, M16-6, 133, 197, 295, 323 vispa, 201, 204
truchear, 133 vistido, T12-13, T14-9, 58, 186, 231, 270
truje, 66 vivienda, M16-7, M16-9, 135, 327
trujeron, 68-69
trujieron, M5-9, 32, 68–69 wallet, 323
trujo, T14-11, 15, 46 windmill, 108
tuétano, M5-7, 64
túnico, M5-3, T14-9, 56, 58, 186, 218, xocoyote, 94
270, 299, 340
turkey, T4-1, T4-2, T4-3, T12-1, 37, 217 yegua, 194
tútano, M5-7, T12-2, 64, 218 yunó, 168

urraca, 313 zacate, 15, 80, 95–96

urutar, 321
vaqueta, M15-10, 301
veinticinco (centavos), T12-14, 180
velís, T14-10, T14-17, 116
vestido, M5-3, M10-14, T12-13, T14-9,
56, 58, 186, 231, 270, 299, 340
vi, M5-8, T12-9, T14-11, T14-20, 15, 46,
66, 68, 74, 227, 272
vide, M5-8, T12-9, T14-11, T14-20, 15,
46, 66, 68, 74, 227, 272
zancarrón, M11-11, 207, 254
zancudo, 86
zapato, 164
zarcillos, M13-3, M16-12, T13-18,
254, 258
zopilote, M7-9, 108, 112, 313
zoquete, T14-10, 15, 80, 95, 96
zotea, M16-7, 327

373
Index of Variables Cited
The letters M or T refer to maps and tables per the List of Maps and List of Tables, with the chapter number followed by
the number of the map or table in that chapter.
‘Airplane,’ M12-4, T12-11, T14-10,
T14-17, 227–28
‘Ankle,’ M11-10, M11-11, T13-6,
T13-11, T13-14, T14-10, T14-16, 18,
206–7, 277
‘Apricot,’ M5-6, T13-4, M16-6, 62–64,
257, 299, 323
‘Attic,’ M16-7, M16-9, 323, 327
‘Avocado,’ M15-15, 305
‘Baby bottle,’ 343
‘Baby of the family,’ 94
‘Back,’ T14-10
‘Back of knee,’ M13-2, T13-17,
253–54, 309
‘Bacon,’ T14-10, T14-17
‘Baking powder,’ 170–71, 318
‘Baking soda,’ M16-2, M16-3, 318
‘Balloon,’ T14-5, T14-17, M15-3, 176,
267, 269, 285, 288
‘Banana,’ T14-10
‘Barber,’ T13-9
‘Bat,’ M8-11, T12-2, T12-4, T13-5, T13-7,
T13-11, T13-14, T14-10, T14-17, 34,
140, 143, 197, 219, 221, 245–46, 247,
248, 250, 257, 299, 340
‘Bathtub,’ 105
‘Bear,’ M8-1, 124
‘Bed,’ M8-10, T12-2, 140
‘Bedspread,’ 176
‘Belch,’ T13-6, T13-14, M16-4, M16-6,
321, 323, 340
‘Belt,’ M15-12, M16-16, 301, 337
‘Bicycle,’ T14-10, T14-12, 273
‘Biscuit,’ M10-11, 183, 186
‘Blanket,’ 64, 176, 340
‘Blouse,’ M5-2, T12-2, T13-11, T14-10,
54–56, 58, 295
‘Boat,’ M6-4, T13-9, 82, 84
‘Bobby pin,’ 135
‘Brakes,’ T14-10, T14-17, M15-4, 37, 288
‘Breakfast,’ T14-10, T14-17, 52, 270, 272
‘Bucket,’ M15-6, T15-4, 293, 295
‘Bury,’ 54
‘Bus,’ T14-10, T14-17
‘Butterfly,’ T14-17, 340
‘Button up,’ 78, 194
‘Buzzard,’ M7-9, T12-2, T13-8, T13-10,
T13-14, 108, 112, 313
‘Cabbage,’ M2-1, M16-3, T15-2, 14–15,
16, 291, 318
‘Cake,’ M10-12, 186
‘Calf of leg,’ T13-4, T13-11, T13-14
‘Carpet,’ 135
‘Cellar,’ T13-4, T13-6, T13-8, T13-11
‘Centipede,’ M8-4, 128, 130
‘Children,’ M8-2, 124, 127
‘Chin,’ T13-6, M15-18, 309
‘Christmas,’ M14-2, T14-4, T14-17,
171, 264, 267, 284
‘Clothesline,’ M16-10, M16-12, 330
‘Clothespin,’ 135, 137
‘Coffee grounds,’ M9-1, 155, 157
‘Coffees,’ 160
‘Cookie,’ M10-10, T12-17, 183, 186,
235, 237
‘Corn,’ 81
‘Cornsilk,’ M11-14, M11-15, 210, 212
‘Courthouse,’ 37
‘Cracker,’ M10-9, M16-16, 180, 183,
235, 337
‘Crow,’ T13-6, T13-11, T13-14, M15-19,
309, 313
‘Crumbs,’ M9-2, M16-14, 197, 333
‘Cup,’ M11-5, T14-10, 197
‘Darkness,’ T14-10, T14-17
‘Dentist,’ T14-10, T14-17, 272
‘Dime,’ M12-1, T12-3, 219
‘Dipper,’ M7-6, 105, 173
‘Doctor,’ M8-14, 149
‘Dollar,’ T14-17, T15-1, M15-1, 284–85
‘Dove,’ T13-14, T13-4
‘Dragonfly,’ T13-9, T13-14, 18
‘Dress,’ M5-3, T14-9, 56–58, 218, 270,
299, 340
‘Drive,’ M8-9, 137, 197, 218
‘Ear of corn,’ 80, 96, 194
‘Earrings,’ M13-3, T13-18, M16-12, 254,
257, 258, 333
‘Earthworm,’ T13-14, T13-16, M16-13,
M16-14, 253, 254, 333
‘Earwax,’ 130
‘Ewe,’ M11-1, 192, 194, 201
‘Fathers,’ T14-11, T14-20, 160
‘Feet,’ T14-20
375
‘Fish,’ M8-6, M16-6, 133–34, 197,
295, 323
‘Fly’ (of pants), 194
‘Fork,’ 194
‘Form of idioma,’ M14-7, T14-18
‘Gender of idioma,’ M14-6, T14-19
‘Goose,’ M5-4, T12-2, T13-4, T13-11,
M16-12, 34, 58–59, 60, 333
‘Grasshopper,’ M7-1, T13-4, T13-11,
T13-14, 96–97, 248
‘Gray,’ M14-5, T14-10, T14-15, 275, 277
‘Green bean,’ M15-17, M16-3, 305,
309, 318
‘Grinding stone,’ T12-2, T13-4
‘Hair,’ 210, 251, 253
‘Hairpin,’ 135, 137
‘Hang,’ 194
‘Harmonica,’ M12-8, T12-18, 237, 239
‘Heat,’ T14-11
‘He brought,’ T14-11, 272
‘Heel,’ 207
‘Hem of skirt,’ T13-4
‘He saw,’ T14-11, T14-20, 66, 272
‘Hoe,’ M15-13, 301, 337
‘Honey,’ 330
‘Honeybee,’ M11-7, M11-9, M16-9,
201, 204, 327
‘Hummingbird,’ M11-2, T12-2, T13-8,
T13-10, T13-14, 39, 194, 250
‘Hut, shack,’ M7-4, 99, 102–4, 164
‘I brought,’ 66
‘Ice cream,’ M12-7, T12-16, T14-8,
T14-14, 180, 234–35, 237, 261,
269–70, 275
‘I cook,’ M11-3, 194
‘I have,’ M8-13, T8-1, T8-2, T14-11,
146, 148, 217
‘I saw,’ M5-8, T12-9, T13-22, T14-11,
T14-20, 66–68, 258, 272
‘Jail,’ 151
‘Jump,’ 97
376
‘Kitchen chair,’ T14-17, M15-8, 295 ‘Part,’ M11-4, 180, 197
‘Kite,’ M7-7, T12-8, 39, 105, 108, 226 ‘Pea,’ M1-2, M15-11, M16-3, 5–6, 301,
318, 513
‘Ladybug,’ T13-9, 248 ‘Peach,’ 52
‘Lake,’ T14-10, T14-17 ‘Peanut,’ M10-8, M16-9, 39, 96, 180,
‘Language,’ T14-11 327
‘Lightbulb,’ M10-6, M16-3, 176, 288, ‘Pearl,’ 151
318 ‘Penny,’ M10-13, 186
‘Lightning,’ 194 ‘Pickaxe,’ M7-10, 112–13
‘Lunch,’ 194 ‘Pickup,’ M10-1, 168, 170, 197
‘Pig,’ T14-10, T14-17
‘Mane,’ M13-1, T13-6, T13-15, 251, 253 ‘Pigeon,’ 340
‘Marble,’ M1-2, T12-2, M15-9, M16-3, ‘Pinwheel,’ M7-8, 108
5–6, 295, 299, 318 ‘Pitcher,’ 305
‘Marrow,’ M5-7, T12-2, T13-4, T13-6, ‘Plug,’ 170
T13-8, 64, 218 ‘Policeman,’ 217
‘Match,’ M10-4, 173, 176 ‘Poor,’ 140
‘Mayor,’ 37 ‘Popcorn,’ M12-6, T12-15, 180, 232,
‘Meat,’ 151 234, 237, 309, 340
‘Melt,’ 140 ‘Porcupine,’ M8-3, T12-2, T13-4,
‘Monkey,’ T14-10 T13-6, T13-10, 127–28
‘Mop,’ M10-3, M16-12, 171, 174, 333 ‘Post office,’ 64
‘Mortar,’ T13-4, 120 ‘Praying mantis,’ T13-10, T13-14
‘Mosquito,’ M6-6, M6-7, M16-6, ‘Present,’ T14-10, T14-17
86–88, 204, 206, 299, 309, 323 ‘Pugnosed,’ 194
‘Moth,’ T13-4, T13-10, M16-17, 340 ‘Purple,’ T13-4, T13-10, T13-14
‘Mothers,’ T14-11, T14-20 ‘Purse,’ M16-15, M16-16, 218, 337
‘Mud,’ T14-10, 95, 96, 201 ‘Push,’ 168
‘Mushroom,’ T5-1, 72
‘Quarter,’ M10-7, T12-14, T13-10,
‘Naked,’ M15-5, T15-3, 291, 293 T13-14, T13-20, M16-12, 176, 180,
‘Neck,’ T12-2, T14-10 232, 258, 285, 288, 333, 340
‘Nickel,’ 171 ‘Quiero que,’ T13-19, 257, 272
‘Nurse,’ T14-10, T14-17, M15-2, 257, 285 ‘Quilt,’ M10-5, 176
‘Nuts,’ M8-5, T12-2, T13-8, T13-14, 130,
133 ‘Rain gutter,’ M6-5, 84–86
‘Red,’ M13-4, T13-21, T14-1, T14-2, 258,
262–63, 284
‘Outlet,’ 170
‘Riding crop,’ M6-3, 39, 78, 80
‘Overcoat,’ T14-17
‘Roadrunner,’ T12-2, T13-8, T13-11,
‘Owl,’ M7-3, 95, 99
T13-14, T14-17
‘Rouge,’ T13-4, T13-11
‘Pacifier,’ M16-19, 343
‘Rubber band,’ T13-8, T13-14
‘Pancakes,’ M9-3, M16-14, 157, 160,
170, 333 ‘Ruler,’ M14-3, T14-6, T14-17, 267, 269,
284
‘Panties,’ M12-3, T12-6, T13-9, T13-10,
T13-11, 223–24, 248
‘Pants,’ 221
index of variables cited
‘Safety pin,’ M8-8, M16-3, 135, 137, 318
‘Scorpion,’ T13-8, T13-9
‘Semi-truck,’ 170
‘Sew,’ 194
‘Shave,’ T14-10, T14-17, 270
‘Shear,’ M11-6, T12-2, T13-4, 197, 201
‘Sheriff,’ 37
‘Shoelace,’ M7-13, M16-6, 118, 204,
206, 323
‘Shorts,’ M12-2, T12-5, 221, 223, 224
‘Sideburns,’ T13-8, T13-10
‘Skillet,’ M9-4, T12-2, 104–5, 160, 162,
197, 218
‘Skin,’ T14-10, T14-17, 64
‘Skirt,’ M6-9, T12-10, T13-4, T14-10,
T14-17, 88–89, 92, 227, 245, 299
‘Sleep,’ 64, 194
‘Slingshot,’ M5-10, M16-16, 69, 72, 337
‘Slip,’ M6-8, 89
‘Slipper,’ M9-5, M16-9, 162, 164, 327
‘Smoke,’ T5-1, M5-11, T14-10, 72–74,
218
‘Socks,’ M5-5, M16-14, 59, 61–62, 221,
288, 295, 333
‘Somersault,’ M6-2, 78
‘Spoiled,’ M15-16, 305
‘Stamps,’ M1-2, T14-10, M16-1, M16-3,
5, 316, 318
‘Stomach,’ T14-10, 272
‘Strawberry,’ T12-2, T13-8, T13-14,
T14-10, M16-18, 340, 343
‘String,’ M7-12, 116–18
‘Student,’ M12-5, T12-12, T14-10,
M16-9, 228, 231, 327
‘Sty,’ M8-12, T12-2, 143
‘Suit,’ M10-14, T12-13, 186, 231–32, 234,
270, 340
‘Suitcase,’ M10-2, T14-10, T14-17, 218
‘Sweater,’ T14-7, T14-17, 171, 172, 267,
269
‘Switch,’ 170
‘Syrup,’ M16-11, M16-12, 330
‘Tadpole,’ T13-4
‘Teacher,’ M14-1, T14-3, T14-17, 264
‘Telephone,’ M14-4, T14-10, T14-13,
273, 275, 284
‘Temple,’ M11-12, M11-13, T12-7, T13-4,
T13-13, T13-14, M16-6, 207, 210,
224, 226, 245, 250, 295, 323
‘They brought,’ M5-9, 68–69
‘Thread,’ 194, 330
‘Thread a needle,’ T13-6, T13-12, 52,
194, 248, 250
‘Throw rug,’ M8-7, M16-16, 135, 337
‘Tick,’ 194
‘Ticket,’ 170
‘Tie shoelaces,’ M6-1, 76–78
‘Tin can,’ T13-14, T14-10, T14-17,
M15-14, 305
‘To fish,’ 133
‘Tracks,’ T5-1, 72
‘Trunk,’ M7-11, T12-2, T13-8, T13-14,
M16-14, 113, 116, 257, 333
‘Tub,’ M7-5, 105
‘Turkey,’ M4-1, M4-2, M4-3, M4-4,
M4-5, M4-6, M4-7, T4-1, T4-2,
T4-3, T12-1, M16-12, 31–47, 95, 102,
112, 130, 137, 140, 167, 215–17, 261,
262, 333, 340
‘Twins,’ M7-2, 39, 97, 99, 192
‘Umbrella,’ T12-2, T13-6, T13-11,
T13-14, 14–10, 257, 340
‘Undress,’ 291, 293
‘Wake up,’ M5-1, 52, 54, 58
‘Wallet,’ M16-5, M16-6, 321, 323, 337
‘Wasp,’ M11-8, M11-9, M16-9, 201,
204, 327
‘Waterfall,’ T13-8, T14-10, T14-17
‘Waterhose,’ M15-7, 295
‘Water salamander,’ 40, 112
‘Wattle,’ T13-4, T13-8
‘Weather,’ 217
‘We have,’ T14-11, T14-20
‘Well,’ M15-10, 299
‘Windmill,’ M7-8, M16-9, 108, 130,
327, 333
‘Winter cap,’ M16-8, M16-9, 327
‘Wreck,’ 168, 180
377
Subject Index

The letter m following a page number refers to a map on

that page. Entries marked with a * are frequently cited
references. Additional citations of these references occur
in the page entries for specific variables in the Index of
Variables Cited.

Acoma language, 155 Austin, Stephen F., 2

Albuquerque, 2, 18, 113 Aztecs, 39, 93, 104, 153. See also Nahuatl language,
ALEC. See Atlas lingüístico-etnográfico de Colombia influence of (Nahuatlisms)
(ALEC)*
ALM. See Atlas lingüístico de México (ALM) /b/, retention in imperfective tense, 74
Alonso, Amado, 30 Baca, Jesús María, 191
alterations of form and meaning, Nahuatl language Bernal-Enríquez, Ysaura, 19, 260, 291
and, 96, 104–16 bilingualism, 155, 241, 245, 283, 340
Alvar, Manuel*, 14, 31, 34, 58, 140, 164, 221 Blanco S., Antonio, 102
alveolar consonants, 149–50, 151 Border Spanish, 7, 22, 62, 64; cultural diversity and,
Americanisms, 32, 62, 78, 86, 295, 316 337; education and, 284; immigration and, 39;
Anglicisms. See under English language, influence of Southeast subdialect of, 337; Southwest subdialect
(Anglicisms) of, 337. See also specific aspects of language change
Anglos, 7, 165 borrowings/loanwords, 37; Arabic and, 62; Caribbean
Apache languages, 154 contributions and, 80–92; English and, 37; French
and, 160–64; language loyalty and, 19; Latin and,
Arawakan languages, 80
66; Native American languages and, 75. See also
archaisms, 15, 32, 62; Castilian Spanish and, 52; English language, influence of (Anglicisms);
definition of, 51–52. See also retentions; specific Nahuatl language, influence of (Nahuatlisms);
archaisim types Pueblo languages; Taino Indians/language
Arellano, Juan Estevan, 7 Bowen, J. Donald, 30
Argentina, 54, 76, 299 Boyd-Bowman, Peter, 32, 39
Armistead, Samuel, 58, 160 Brondo Whitt, Encarnacíon, 155
Athapascan language family, 154 Brule Spanish, 160. See also Isleño Spanish
Atlas lingüístico de Hispanoamérica, 31, 34 Buesa Oliver, Tomás, 32, 88
Atlas lingüístico de México (ALM)*, 26, 31, 40, 43, 78,
104, 105, 191–92
Cabaza, Berta, 160
Atlas lingüístico-etnográfico de Colombia (ALEC)*,
Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez, 1, 22, 29
26, 31, 84, 129, 299, 301, 321
Cahita language, 43
attrition of Spanish skills. See Spanish skills,
attrition of Carib languages, 80, 82
Atwood, E. Bagby, 72 Castilian Spanish, 14, 15, 52, 59, 64, 248, 261

379
Catholicism: Pueblo Indians and, 154
Cerda, Gilberto, 160
ch, pronunciation of, 221
Chambers, J. K., 68
Chamuscado expedition, 155
change from below, change from above and, 261
Chang-Rodríguez, E., 183
Chicano English, 7, 273
Chihuahua, Mexico, 24, 25
Clegg, J. Halvor, 95, 102, 104, 190
Cobos, Rubén*, 13, 30, 56, 80, 84, 95, 102, 154
code-switching, 166–67; bilingual competence
and, 166
Colombia. See Atlas lingüístico-etnográfico
Colombia (ALEC)*
Coltharp, Lurline, 13, 104
Columbus, Christopher, 29, 66, 80, 82
compounding: lexical compounds, 32, 86, 124, 137–45
CORDE. See Corpus diacrónico del español
(CORDE)*
Corominas, Joan, 64, 143
Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, 1, 29
Corpus de referencia del español actual (CREA)*, 59
Corpus diacrónico del español (CORDE)*, 56, 59
Cortés, Hernán, 1, 93
Craddock, Jerry, 26, 155
CREA. See Corpus de referencia del español
actual (CREA)*
Crepúsculo de la Libertad, El, 191
Cuestionario para la delimitación de los dialectos
de México, 31, 299
Curtin, L. S. M., 157
DARE. See Dictionary of American Regional English
(DARE)
Dávila, Alberto, 20
dialects, 7; boundaries of, 321; development of, 315;
markers of, 231; variation and, 315–16
Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua
castellana, 143
Diccionario de la lengua española (Real Academia
Española) (DRAE)*, 52, 54
Diccionario de mejicanismos, 32, 40, 43
Diccionario de mejicanismos (Santamaría)*, 32,
40, 56, 65, 84, 85, 201
Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE),
72, 318
dictionary of New Mexico and southern Colorado
Spanish, A (Cobos)*, 80
dipthongization of unstressed vowels, 54
Dodge, Meredith, 39
Dominguez, Miguel, 210, 224
DRAE. See Diccionario de la lengua española (Real
Academia Española) (DRAE)*
education: grammatical forms and, 279–82; label
choices and, 99, 173; standardization and, 146, 148.
See also under standard Spanish
Emiliano, Ramón, 95, 102, 104
English language, influence of (Anglicisms), 37,
165–90, 343–45; code-switching and, 166–67;
education and, 264–69; generational change and,
219–26; lexical enrichment and, 167–71; linguistic
integration and, 180–89; spoken sources and,
171–73; standardization and, 264–65, 267; time
and, 190; Traditional Spanish and, 173–80
Enguita Utrilla, José, 32, 88
Erickson, Kenneth, 22
Espejo, Antonio de, 39, 104
Espinosa, Aurelio Macedonio, 1, 5, 21, 26, 30, 37, 102,
167, 321, 337
Florentine Codex, 116
folk etymology, 127–30
form: independent changes in, 124–30; folk
etymology and, 127–30
free variation, 68
Freire-Marreco, Barbara, 155
French language, influence of (Gallicisms), 160–64
Gallegos, José Manuel, 191
Gallicisms. See French language, influence of
(Gallicisms)
Galván, Roberto, 13, 72, 95, 160, 201, 313
Gandert, Miguel, 7
generations, linguistic change and. See linguistic
change, generational
Gilliéron, Jules, 207
grammar: language change and, 124, 145–51, 157, 167,
180, 258
Gross, Stuart, 102
Guerrero Romero, Javier, 40
Gutiérrez, Ramón, 154, 165

380 Subject index

h: pronunciation of, 69, 72 literature concerning, 19; nonspecific response
haplology, 124, 127 and, 251, 253; proficiency measures and, 243–44;
Harrington, John, 155 prompt required and, 248, 250–51; Traditional
Spanish and, 241, 258–60
Hendricks, Rick, 39
Lara, Luis, 15
Hernández Chávez, Eduardo, 19–20, 149
La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y
Hills, Elijah, 26, 30, 167, 318
adversidades, 56
Hispanic(s), 7, 30; Pueblo Indians and, 154–55
Lerner, Isías, 52, 80, 248, 301
Hispaniola, 80–92
linguistic change, generational, 215–17; decline of
Homestead Act, 24 Traditional Spanish and, 217–18, 240; English
Hudson, Alan, 19–20 and Spanish and, 231–40; English influence and,
hypercorrect pattern, 279 219–26; integration process and, 221, 223, 224;
Mexican and Standard Spanish influence and,
idiolects, 5, 51, 316 226–31; Spanish skills and, 226; standardization
and, 217, 227
Indians (Native Americans). See Native
Americans (Indians) linguistic equality, 12–14, 68
Isleño Spanish, 58, 72, 97, 160, 168, 180, 219, Lionnet, Andrés, 43
285, 321, 340 Lipski, John, 14, 160
isoglosses, 34; bundles of, 321; definition of, 316, loanwords. See borrowings/loanwords
318. See also specific applications of Lope Blanch, Juan M.*, 2, 5, 22, 26, 31, 34, 95, 140, 157,
191–92, 299
Jaramillo, June, 30 López, David, 19, 20
Jenkins, Devin, 19 Lozano, Anthony, 15
Jiménez Ríos, Enrique, 52 Luchetti, Cathy, 318
Juilland, Alphonse, 183 Luna County, 24
Julyan, Robert, 33
MacCurdy, Raymond, 58, 160
Kany, Charles, 58 MapInfo software, 27
Karttunen, Frances, 94, 104, 313 Mares, E. A. “Tony,” 19
Kearney, Stephen Watts, 37 maritime vocabulary, 75, 76–80
Kercheville, Francis, 160 McCollough, Robert, 19
Keresan languages, 153, 155 McKinley County, 24
Kessell, John, 39 McLean, Alice, 318
Kiddle, Lawrence, 31, 32, 34–48, 215–17, 262 Mejías, Hugo, 104
Kiowa-Tanoan language family, 153 Mendoza Guerrero, Everardo, 43, 64, 78, 143, 291, 299
Knaut, Andrew, 22 Mexican Spanish, influence of (Mexicanisms),
Kravitz, Merryl, 25 7, 191–92, 288–95, 313, 340; braceros and, 284;
distribution of, 288; Early period of, 295; findings
concerning, 212; Great Depression and, 284;
Labov, William, 279 independent developments and, 197–204; Indian
Lamadrid, Enrique, 7 languages and, 39; Later period of, 295, 299;
language: definition of, 5; myths and, 11–20; social New Mexican Spanish and, 192–96, 316; new
differences and, 11–12 Nahuatlisms and, 305–13; patterns of migration
language loyalty, 19 and, 204–12, 283–84; Recent period of, 299–305;
language shift, 19; age of acquisition of English and, standardization versus, 284–88; variation
258, 260; cultural adaptation and, 241; distorted categories of, 192. See also Nahuatl language,
Spanish response and, 254–57; English response influence of (Nahuatlisms)
to fill lexical gap and, 247–48; generations Miller, Lesley, 58
and, 241–44; inability to respond and, 244–47; Miller, Wick, 155

381
Molina, Alonso de, 93, 94 norma culta, 43, 66, 262
Mora, Marie, 20 Northerners, 8, 283; labels for, 12–13
Mora County, 24–25, 34
Moreno de Alba, José, 2–3, 15, 64, 204 Olmos, Andrés de, 93
myths, linguistic: context and, 12; English versus Oñate, Juan de, 1–2, 22, 29–30, 37, 89, 102, 154
Spanish, 17–18; New Mexican Spanish, sixteenth- Ornstein, Jacob, 5
century Spain and, 14–17; Northerners versus Otermín, Antonio de, 33
Southerners and, 12–14; social inequalities and,
Oxford English Dictionary, 318
11–12; Spanish as official language of New Mexico
and, 17; Spanish language maintenance and,
18–20; value judgments and, 12–14 Pachuco slang, 102, 104
palatal fricative [s], 102, 104
Nahuatl language, influence of (Nahuatlisms), 15, paragogic /e/, 15, 149
39–40, 78, 92, 93; alterations and, 96, 104–16; El Paso del Norte, 2
Classical Nahuatl, 93–94; initial tz and, 112; Pease-Alvarez, Lucinda, 19
modern immigration and, 305–13; New Mexican Pedrero González, Amalia*, 31, 34, 46, 128, 140,
Spanish and, 94–96; phonological influence 164, 207, 221
of, 94; reductions in use and, 116–20; Spanish
Penny, Ralph, 68, 145, 316
grammatical structure and, 94. See also under
Mexican Spanish, influence of (Mexicanisms) Pérez, Gilberto, 149
Native Americans (Indians), 2, 7 Pérez de Luxán, Diego, 39
Navajo language, 154, 272 Pérez Galdos, Benito, 58
Nebrija, Antonio de, 93 Perissinotto, Giorgio, 2–3
New Mexican Spanish, 1, 5; Caribbean contributions Pueblo Indians, 153; Catholicism and, 154; Hispanic(s)
to, 75, 80–92; decline of, 18–20; education and, and, 154–55; societal bilingualism and, 155
46–47; English influence and, 37; history of Pueblo languages, 154–55
speakers and, 30–31; independent developments Pueblo Revolt of 1680, 2, 14, 96
and, 34; isolation and, 123–24; maritime
contributions to, 75, 76–80; Mexican Spanish and, Quechua language, 92
192–96, 316; Mexican Spanish and Border Spanish
Quesada Pacheco, Miguel, 102, 128
and, 316–21; popular Mexican Spanish influence
on, 37–43; prospects for the future of, 337, 340–45;
Spain and, 14–17; Standard Spanish influence and, /r/: vocalization of, 149, 151
43, 46–47; studies of, 30; uniqueness of, 30. See also Rael, Juan, 30, 167
specific aspects and influences Ramos y Duarte, Feliz, 32, 40, 43
New Mexico, 283; Anglo population of, 2, 283–84; Real Academia Española, 12, 52; Corpus de referencia
as colony, 30–32; Constitution of, 17; Hispanic del español (CREA)*, 59; Corpus diacrónico del
presence in, 1–3, 283; Mexican immigrants and, 2 español (CORDE)*, 56, 59; Diccionario de la lengua
New Mexico–Colorado Spanish Survey (NMCOSS)* española (DRAE)*, 52, 54
project, 3, 192, 343, 345; archaic verb forms, reductions in use, 201, 258, 260, 264; Nahuatl
elicitation and, 66; Colorado and, 22; data analysis language and, 116–20
and mapping, 3, 27; elicitation component, 26; relics (relic forms), 58, 82, 84, 95, 105, 116, 118, 137, 239;
free conversation component, 26; historical remote regions and, 149, 162
background of, 1–3, 22, 24; interview schedule,
retentions, 31–34; grammatical archaisms, 66–69;
26–27; localities, determination of, 22–25;
lexical archaisms, 51–66; Nahuatl and, 96–104;
objectives of, 21–22; sample distribution, 4m;
phonological archaisms, 69–74; stigmatization
sampling grid, 22, 23m; selection of consultants,
and, 54
25–26; Spanish proficiency measures and, 243–44;
terminology, 3–8 Robbins, Wilfred, 155
Nichols, John, 14 Ross, Ronald, 30
Niza, Marcos de, 89

382 Subject index

/s/: aspiration of, 15, 17, 148–49 Taino Indians/language, 80–81, 82, 84–85, 86,
Sahagún, Bernardino de, 116 89, 92, 180
San Juan (Ohkay Owingeh), 29 Tanoan language, 153
San Luis (Colorado), 283 Teschner, Richard, 13, 26, 30, 72, 95, 160, 201, 313
Santamaría, Francisco*, 32, 40, 84, 104, 113 Tewa language, 1, 153, 155, 157
San Xavier del Bac mission, 2 /tl/ cluster, 94
Schilling-Estes, Natalie, 240 Traditional Spanish, 2–3, 5–6, 7, 22, 30; archaisms
semantics: independent changes in, 130–37 and, 52; in California, 2–3; decline of, generational,
217–18; English language and, 173–80; independent
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen, 257–58
development and, 15–16; Mexican Spanish and, 15,
Siméon, Rémi, 40, 94 316; North Central dialect of, 323–29; Northeast
Sinaloa, 43, 64, 72, 78, 86, 89, 143, 149, 194, 207, dialect of, 330–33; Río Arriba dialect of, 321–23;
212, 291, 299 subdialects of, 321–37; West Central dialect of, 333
Smead, Robert, 95, 102, 104 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 165, 283
Smith, Albert, 22 Trudgill, Peter, 68
sociolinguistic variation, 273, 277–78 Trujillo, Juan Antonio, 14, 123, 154, 241
Solé, Yolanda, 19 Trujillo, Luis, 86, 130, 135, 155, 201
Sonora, 206 Twitchell, Ralph, 39
Southerners, 8; labels for, 13–14
Spain: Moors and, 62; New Mexican U.S. Census: 1980, 24; 2000, 7–8, 18–19
Spanish and, 14–17. See also Uto-Aztecan language family, 154
Castilian Spanish
Spanish skills, attrition of: distorted Spanish
Vargas, Diego de, 30, 37, 39
response and, 254–57; English response to
fill lexical gap and, 247–48; inability to respond variables: definition of, 5
and, 244–47; nonspecific response and, 251, 253; variants: definition of, 5
prompt required and, 248, 250–51 VARILEX. Variación léxica del español
Spencer, Robert, 155 del mundo, 164
SPSS software, 27 Venezuela, 56, 82, 116
standardization, 226–31, 270, 340; Anglicisms Vigil, Lucy, 27
and, 264–65, 267; Mexicanization versus, Villa, Daniel, 20
284–88, 340; process of, 272–73
standard Spanish, 12, 261–62; classroom context Wagon Mound, 25
and, 263–64; education in general and, 272–82, Weber, David, 160
284; formal study of Spanish and, 263–72;
Williams, Jerry, 22
social variables and, 262–63
Wolfram, Walt, 240
stress patterns, 145–46
subjunctive mood, 272
Zentella, Ana Celia, 166
subtractive bilingualism, 340
Zuni language, 153
Zurita, Alonso de, 140

383